Netflix premiered the slasher film “There’s Someone Inside Your House” at this year’s Fantastic Fest. Patrick Brice (known for “Creep”) directs this film from a screenplay by Henry Gayden (“Shazam”). “There’s Someone Inside Your House” features performances by Sydney Park, Théodore Pellerin, Asjha Cooper, Dale Whibley, and Jesse LaTourette. The film is based on Stephanie Perkins’ 2017 book of the same title and follows high schoolers in a small, sleepy Nebraska town as they eagerly await college and career decisions but are suddenly forced to navigate the shocking and violent murders of their classmates.
“There’s Someone Inside Your House” features the typical elements of a high school slasher film: drugs, sex, and secrets. The film quickly establishes the killer’s pattern and why the victims are selected. Each victim has a secret. The killer uses that secret to torment the victim before killing them in some gruesome manner. The killer then shares the victim’s secret with the rest of the town.
The film harkens back to “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997). Unlike in that film, the victims in “There’s Someone Inside Your House” don’t share one common secret, but rather they have their own individual secrets that the killer seeks to expose. Rather than know who exactly the victims will be, there is some surprise for the audience as to who is next. After the second killing, the students throw a “secret” party to expose their own secrets but spirals into a typical high school party and becomes the scene of a third murder.
“There’s Someone Inside Your House” is not substantially innovative or does not do much to push the genre forward but is a good update to the slasher film. The film does present updated character profiles, with a diverse central cast, that move somewhat beyond high school horror film tropes. A unique characteristic of the killer is that they create 3D printed masks of the victims to wear as they attempt each kill, in order to reveal the true person under the victim’s metaphorical mask.
From the outset, the film sets up one character as the suspected killer, making it rather obvious that he is in fact not the murderer. For a slasher film, the violence and murder scenes are substantial, but it does not go over the top for sake of blood and gore. Sydney Park gives a strong performance as Makani Young, one of the central characters with a complicated past who realizes that she might become a victim at one point. It is her confrontation with the killer that leads her to forgive herself for her past and share her secrets with her friends.
Overall, “There’s Someone Inside Your House” isn’t a new concept, but it is a solid film with good characterization, some unique elements, plot twists, and strong performances from the cast. “There’s Someone Inside Your House” is set to release on Netflix on October 6th.
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