It had the potential to be so much more
From the same teams behind 'Stranger Things' and 'The Conjuring' comes a teen slasher that, on paper, had us thinking it would be more memorable.
Makani Young (Sydney Park) is the new kid on the block, moving from Hawaii to a quiet, small town in Nebraska. In her final year of highschool, as she and all of her friends begin the countdown to graduation, there's the unfortunate matter of a serial killer on the loose, and they just so happen to be killing off members of Makani's year one by one. Within the first few minutes of 'There's Someone Inside Your House', you discover why a serial killer is murdering these young teens - they all have skeletons in their closets.
The first two on-screen kills make for rather pleasurable viewing, mostly because they make the most sense. While the first is a football player who concocted a heinous hazing ceremony for a queer classmate, the other decided it was a marvellous idea to start an extremely racist podcast. Both horrible actions, both dealt with in a pretty gruesome manner by the killer. So far, so good.
It's after this that things begin to get a little bit messy. Once word gets out in town that there's a murderer going around wearing a face mask of their victim's face before they kill them, the teens naturally begin to suspect anyone they come across.
But as the kills begin to rack up, the sense begins to go out of the window. Basing a horror movie around the idea of "cancel culture" is a nice twist on the social media movement of the past few years, but this Netflix horror doesn't follow through with its commitment to the theme. The topic falls to the waste side halfway through, in favour of the masked killer literally targeting people with any sort of secret, making this slash-athon feel like every other generic teen horror.
It's quite surprising really, for a movie with such a strong team behind it to forget the message it's trying to portray to its (presumedly) younger-skewed audience. Based on Stephanie Perkins’ New York Times best-selling novel, written for the screen by Henry Gayden of 'Shazam!' fame, directed by Patrick Brice from the 'Creep' franchise and produced by James Wan’s Atomic Monster ('The Conjuring') and Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps ('Stranger Things'), that's an impressive line-up of creatives in horror.
Had there been more depth to the killer's motives as the film progressed, it could have been a solid horror entry. It's no deep, dark secret then that this is yet another forgettable teen slasher which you'll probably watch it once, shrug and say it was okay, and never return to it ever again.
'There's Someone Inside Your House' is available to stream now on Netflix.