Thursday, March 28, 2024

Movie Review: ‘There’s Someone Inside Your House’ is a Mixed Bag of Terror Tricks


Director: Patrick Brice
Screenwriter: Henry Gayden
Stars: Sydney Park, Theodore Pellerin, Diego Josef, Jesse LaTourette, Asjha Cooper

 

Synopsis: The graduating class at Osborne High is being targeted by a masked assailant, intent on exposing the darkest secret of each victim, and only a group of misfit outsiders can stop the killings.

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There’s someone inside your house watching horror movies in October, and that person is probably you, am I right? It most certainly is me, as I look for the latest and greatest terror tales, movies, or television. It can be slow burn horror, kinetic horror, horror sequels, and reimaginings galore. And then of course there’s an old favorite—the teen slasher, which came back with a vengeance this past summer with the Fear Street trilogy, which was only partially successful.

So many filmmakers have been trying to replicate the wit, tone, and success of Scream for the past twenty-five years that it’s become routine to expect the obvious in teen slasher movies: a slick and well-paced opening kill, lots of references to modern technology, a likable heroine with a sordid past, and a killer with a specific agenda that’s revealed in detail by the end. Yes, we’ve seen most of There’s Someone Inside Your House before, and although the film has its share of entertaining moments and features a creepy villain, there are too many forgettable characters, long lulls between kill scenes, and laughable moments in the screenplay that completely defy logic.

Based on the bestselling novel by Stephanie Perkins, the new horror film, now available on Netflix, features a killer who wears not only one mask but several, always with the face of the victim about to be slaughtered. The killer is exposing the secrets of flawed individuals in a small Nebraska town, which is bad news for Makani (Sydney Park), a high school senior who made a single tragic mistake and has been paying the price ever since. She’s been trying to find normalcy after moving from Hawaii to live with her grandmother, but soon her friends are being picked off one by one, and she sets out to save her life and theirs, and stop the massacre.

Director Patrick Brice (Creep) wisely wastes no time with an opening suspense scene where the first victim is not only disposed of in an absurdly painful way but also sees the errors of his past that can now never be atoned. At his scheduled celebration of life at a local church, a second high school student is brutally murdered right before the mourners step inside the building—cue the mostly throwaway characters who now fear they’ll be next.

Not every teen slasher movie needs to be a wild ride with lots of humor and endless jump scares, but most of There’s Someone Inside Your House could be more fun. Good young actors like Diego Josef, Jesse LaTourette, Asjha Cooper, and Burkely Duffield do what they can with the material, but screenwriter Henry Gayden, who wrote the more tongue-in-cheek Shazam, presents the material completely straight, despite how silly the proceedings become after a while, like how little these people learn how to stay safe with a killer on the loose (and just wait until a car filled with people plows straight into a blazing corn-maze).

The film works as well as it does for the occasionally frightening moments and the terrific performances by Park in the lead role and Theodore Pellerin as Ollie, a mysterious loner she ultimately falls for. If you’ve come for the kills, there are scenes to like here, one teenager after another trying to escape the murderer in increasingly ridiculous ways. And Park and Pellerin develop a nice, unusual chemistry that gives some of the quieter moments some power.

Unfortunately, There’s Someone Inside Your House never finds any significant momentum in its pacing or energy, giving little variety in its use of settings, the friendships between characters rarely feeling natural. Something feels off for most of the narrative, and the big problem overall is that outside of Makani, you rarely care too much about the characters and their outcomes. Sure, there are lots of strong horror movies where you don’t care about the characters, but without much style or substance elsewhere in this film, there’s little to keep you invested in what happens next. And the reveal of the villain, along with the motivations behind the kills, also leaves you disappointed at the end.

When the film reached its closing credits, I immediately put on the first episode of Midnight Mass, also on Netflix, and was immediately sucked into a mysterious world of chills and secrets, with characters and a place that grip you from the start. In minutes I could feel myself in the hands of a master storyteller, and in that opening hour I could see what great horror can do, and what serviceable horror wants to live up to. At ninety minutes, There’s Someone Inside Your House is a viable option for your October horror needs, but it’s no Midnight Mass—and it’s certainly no Scream.

Grade: C

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