There’s Someone Inside Your House Review: A Horror Movie With A Great Idea

The originality of Netflix’s recent horror offerings is questionable, meaning these movies often stand on the shoulders of their genre predecessors. The Fear Street series nods so often Scream, Friday the 13th, and The witch that he failed to develop an identity of his own. Nobody gets out alive noticeably overlaps with His house in terms of reinventing a haunted house as a source of socially charged terror and tension. And the latest from the streaming service, There is someone inside your house, is equally indebted to films such as Black christmas, Haze, and I know what you did last summer, which is explicitly referenced. There’s a creepy conceit in There is someone inside your houseBut that genuinely creepy detail can’t counteract the overall familiarity. There is someone inside your house it’s intermittently effective, but ultimately uncomplicated, and feels like a product of its time in disappointing ways.

In adapting Stephanie Perkins’ 2017 novel, director Patrick Brice and screenwriter Henry Gayden all too often rely on simplistic dynamics that contribute to the construction of the flat world. There is little depth here in both the location and the characters. The small town consists of a school, a police station, a church, and cornfields; Obviously viewers must understand that it is meant to be oppressive. The marginalized protagonists are ethnically, biologically and sexually diverse; it is clear that viewers intend to empathize with his otherness. The thugs are all mini neo-Nazis, with dialogue criticizing “fake news,” advocating an alliance with white power, and regurgitating toxic masculinity. The intended point: Your parents probably voted for Donald Trump.

All of these components feel superficial, like Brice and Gayden ticking boxes off a list of what they think Gen-Z teens will respond to. That superficiality means that There is someone inside your house it has to offer something unique in the slasher department to set itself apart, and the results are mixed there too. In a disconcerting touch, the killer carries a 3D printed copy of his latest victim’s face. That wardrobe choice underscores the killer’s ideology that every victim deserves death for their hypocrisy. But those slasher sequences lack the propelling energy and over-the-top grotesquerie needed to shake up. There is someone inside your house to the life. There are bursts of blood from sliced ​​open tendons, torsos, and throats, but the artificiality of that candy-red blood runs throughout the artificial film.

There is someone inside your house set in rural Osborne, an island community shocked by the murder in the opening scene of the film of football player Jackson Pace (Markian Tarasiuk). Photos strewn around Jackson’s corpse and texted to everyone in town reveal an ugly secret: He once hit his teammate Caleb Greeley (Burkely Duffield) in a hazing ritual that went too far. Some people point to Caleb for Jackson’s death, while others, like those Jackson harassed and abused for years, feel a sense of sad satisfaction.

Apart from these reactions is the new one in the city Makani Young (Sydney Park), who left her parents in Hawaii to live with her grandmother in Osborne. He didn’t know Jackson very well, but he sees how his death fails to disconcert his friends: the outspoken Alex (Asjha Cooper), the sensitive Rodrigo (Diego Josef), the space-obsessed Darby (Jesse LaTourette) and the irresponsible Zach ( Dale Whibley). ). They don’t really care that Jackson is dead (“Fuck these reactive folks!” Darby says of his former bully), but they’re curious who might have done it. And they are quick to point the finger at their classmate Ollie Larsson (Théodore Pellerin), whom they describe as an “all-in-black school shooter style icon,” and casually label a sociopath.

No one seems to catch the longing eyes Makani and Ollie look at each other, because Makani’s friends are too busy doing what teenagers do in all horror movies. They hook up, have fun, miss the killer between them and then start to die. Then come in There is someone inside your house, It’s the same as always.

On the bright side of things are Park and Pellerin, who give the film’s most naturalistic performances as Makani and Ollie. A secret make-out session in a parked car has more excitement than any of the movie’s murder sequences due to Park and Pellerin’s oppositional chemistry, reminiscent of convicted JD and Veronica from Heather. Less successful is William Arnold’s production design, particularly the prevalence of photographs revealing secrets in each murder scene. The film moves so fast through these hundreds of printed images of bloody faces and burned hands that they lack impact. (At least the killer is making good use of his printer!)

But the staging of these scenes shows more care than the film’s attempted critique of white privilege, resulting in an altercation so steeped in serious statements that you forget horror can have a bit of fun. Also, there are not one, but two, hazing subplots that went wrong here, which begs the question: Why not add a third and call it trending?

“I’ve seen a lot of real crimes,” student council president Katie Koons (Sarah Dugdale) sniffs as the murders begin to occur, and that statement applies to There is someone inside your house on a larger scale. This is a movie created by people who know the tropes of the genre, but don’t know how to put a unique twist on them. The result is that the film never completely transcends the level of the film “put in the background while decorating for Halloween.” When is the next big slasher movie coming? When will someone dare to be as inventive or as hideous as this genre requires? There is someone inside your house it will keep people waiting.

There is someone inside your house airs on Netflix as of October 6, 2021.