[Fantastic Fest Review] ‘There’s Someone Inside Your House’ Offers a Bland Intro to Teen Slashers

Scream shook the slasher foundation so hard upon release that it ushered in a new wave of teen slashers eager to follow suit. The ’90s are back in full swing lately, including another wave of ’90s inspired slashers. Enter There’s Someone Inside Your House. It’s a teen slasher, adapted from Stephanie Perkins’ YA novel, that leans too heavily on Scream for its high school murder mystery.

For her senior year of high school, Makani Young (Sydney Park) moved to small-town Osborne, Nebraska. Her relocation from Hawaii meant fleeing a troubled past, but trouble seems to have found her anyway; someone is targeting and slaying the graduating glass. A masked killer doesn’t just want to murder; they want to expose their victims’ darkest secrets to the world. Makani and her friends must discover the killer’s identity before they lose their secrets and their lives.

Directed by Patrick Brice (Creep, Creep 2), There’s Someone Inside Your House gets off to a strong start with an opening kill that’ll leave you reaching for your Achilles heels in sympathy. Then it shifts to the requisite introductions of character and setting and the usual depiction of high school hell. This is where Brice’s latest, penned by Shazam writer Henry Gayden, is content to stay for much of the story. There’s the mean class president who picks on Makani’s friend and the film’s most likable of all, Darby (Jesse LaTourette). There are the jocks that haze one of their own for being gay, and Makani’s sardonic pal Alex (Asjha Cooper) crushes on fellow friend Rodrigo (Diego Josef), a pill popper that reciprocates her feelings. And then there’s the outcast, Ollie (Théodore Pellerin), who serves as both the town scapegoat and Makani’s love interest.

This slasher is more interested in the social dynamics and high school hierarchy than in the slashing. The kills start excellent, including a gnarly throat-slitting or two, but quickly cut away and finish off the victim to get back to the drama. That might’ve been okay if the mystery injected any suspense whatsoever. Makani’s secret gets drawn out as long as possible, but it’s never quite as egregious as the dream sequence teases build it up to be. It’s befitting of Makani’s guilt but clunkily handled nonetheless. Even worse is the miscast Ollie; Pellerin can’t manage to bring any personality or energy to his character and never rises to making him the red herring the film so desperately wants him to become. He’s constantly bullied and targeted for being a creep or sociopath. Still, his only crime seems to be contentedness in isolation and doting over Makani no matter how poorly she treats him.

The actual killer’s identity, who’s willing to spend hours to 3D print masks of his victims’ faces to adorn while committing murder, is far too easy to spot. A gimmick that sounds neat in theory but never gets explored in any meaningful way, outside of begging the questions of who can afford a 3D printer or how access to one didn’t make it painfully easy for police to narrow down their suspect list. Ultimately, the motives owe a debt to Billy Loomis, just in a more superficial way.

Everything exists on a surface level in this hollow slasher. Characters never feel fully realized, the two lead lovebirds lack chemistry, and a lack of tension can’t sustain such a low body count or horror. Baffling choices get made; introducing Nazi paraphernalia is always a glaring, lazy neon sign that points to bad people in movies. That crutch isn’t needed. It attempts to make big swings in the finale, but not even a fun set piece can make the obvious exciting. This might be a passable intro to a teen slasher, for the young target audience wholly unfamiliar with the genre, except Netflix just released a trio of ’90s inspired slashers this summer with far more personality and bite.

There’s Someone Inside Your House releases on Netflix on October 6, 2021.