Studio: Netflix
Director: Patrick Brice
Writer: Henry Gayden
Producer: Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, James Wan, Michael Clear
Stars: Sydney Park, Theodore Pellerin, Asjha Cooper, Dale Whibley, Jesse LaTourette, Diego Josef, Burkely Duffield, Sarah Dugdale, William MacDonald, Andrew Dunbar, Markian Tarasiuk
Review Score:
Summary:
A masked murderer’s mysterious killing spree exposes the secrets of a small town’s high school students.
Review:
Another day, another aggressively ordinary Netflix thriller no one will talk about once the weekend comes and goes.
From the moment “There’s Someone Inside Your House” starts, you know by-the-book bores are in store. Several sluggish minutes are spent with Jackson, a high school football player, as he meanders around his empty house, talks trash on the phone, then comes across a few out of place oddities like a conspicuous egg timer and incriminating photos from a violent altercation. Clearly we’re in for a clichéd cold open where a cut to opening credits will come shortly after a masked murderer’s kill so the movie can begin with a bang.
Slow-to-start suspense films always employ this tactic whenever they have first acts overloaded with chatty exposition, as is the case here. It’s a thrown bone to desperately say, “No really, we have some splatter on the itinerary. We just have to set up a bunch of bland background while chumming our mild mystery with red herrings first. Here, have one death as an appetizer, since it will be another 20 minutes before we serve up the next one.”
When that second murder occurs, the students at Nebraska’s Osborne High School conclude they’re being targeted by an unidentified maniac determined to expose everyone’s darkest secrets. It turns out Jackson brutally beat a gay teammate under the guise of participating in a routine hazing ritual. Student council president Katie anonymously produced a podcast to spout racist conspiracy theories. Rodrigo… abuses prescription painkillers? I’m not sure the killer understands his/her own M.O. It would be one thing if Rodrigo were a drug dealer ruining other people’s lives. Why is the murderer taking revenge on him for a private problem that only affects Rodrigo?
“There’s Someone Inside Your House” becomes a tepid teen slasher because the movie pays far more attention to mediocre melodrama than to the murders. Everyone is a possible suspect. Everyone is a potential victim. And, they’re not just ending up dead. They’re getting killed in gruesome fashion, with one girl stabbed through the face and hanged from a church’s ceiling for unsuspecting funeral mourners to walk in on.
Yet no one ever seems especially terrified, much less emotionally devastated by any of the deaths for longer than a minute. Granted, a couple of killed classmates weren’t well liked. But everyone should at least be on edge that there’s an unidentified psycho on the loose, no? These kids treat serial murders like an everyday inconvenience that gets in the way of indulging in “woe is me” ennui or commiserating over cliques in their social hierarchy. “There’s Someone Inside Your House” features a ton of teens talking, and their blah banter has no bearing on anything that’s important to the story or to the slashing.
Director Patrick Brice initially sets a tone with a light lick of levity. “There’s Someone Inside Your House” isn’t an out and out horror-comedy. But quirky quips add a pinch of snark, like one jock paying tearful tribute to his fallen teammate by sincerely saying, “I hope they’re serving Fireball up in paradise, brother” while pouring one out in his memory.
A full fun factor never materializes however. The source novel by Stephanie Perkins probably had the pages to delve deeper into an eclectic cast of characters, no doubt puffing their personalities into viable villains or endearing victims worth an emotional investment. At 90 minutes, the film adaptation simply doesn’t have the real estate to hit similar heights in terms of creating nail-biting tension or a troupe of teens worth caring about. To maintain a routine runtime, Brice flattens the film’s feel by reducing relationships and trimming secondary players into irrelevant phantoms who dissolve into the periphery. (Here’s looking at you, Gam.)
Unusual editing leaves pretty peculiar leftovers in its wake. Cutaways go bizarrely overboard on B-roll bits. When Jackson takes off his letterman jacket in the opening sequence, the camera cuts to a close-up of said jacket being draped over a chair. What’s the point of this? He’s already worn the jacket for a full two minutes, so it’s not like we didn’t pick up on the fact that Jackson plays football. “There’s Someone Inside Your House” does this again later with a close-up on a grandmother’s sleep disorder brochure. Her somnambulism is irrefutably established both before and after this close-up, so the only implication here is that the brochure or her insomnia must be an important clue to take note of. Nope. Granny’s issues end up as irrelevant as Darby, a misfit friend who barely features at all except in final moments after the audience has already forgotten their existence.
You’d think irredeemably awful B-movies would cause a critic to reconsider how he spends his time. It’s actually average films like “There’s Someone Inside Your House” that steadily sap one’s enthusiasm for entertainment. Although technically functional since they follow predictable formulas, they’re so tonally tame that they’re effectively lifeless. “There’s Someone Inside Your House” provides pause to examine what value exists in a middling movie that leaves no impact whatsoever, not even as a laundry-folding distraction. It’s basically a black hole that begs the question, is this really the best content I can choose right now?
Review Score: 40
Everyone else who has no problem with a fright flick that feels like “Lizzie McGuire” decided to get dark with a PG-13 Halloween special should do just fine.