There's Someone Inside Your House Review

Somewhere between the charismatic cast and intriguing story, Netflix's latest slasher film "There's Somebody Inside Your House" holds a wonderful film. But it's not what we end up getting. Bogged down by a lack of subtly and reliance on genre tropes, it's fine for a mindless evening on the couch, but it's frustrating to be genuinely intrigued by a premise only to be left with scrapes left over from other, better films.

For a film entitled "There's Someone Inside Your House," it does open inside somebodies house with someone else inside it, but once a knife slices their ankles, the film quickly disregards its name and becomes a standard teen slasher flick. The twist? The now dead individual had a secret. In a better movie, this would have helped provided dramatic heft to the commonly cliched cinematic category, but then it happens to another person, and then another. 

Their secrets range from self-inflicting like pill-popping to physical abuse of others, but since we never really spend any time with the victims, their mystery is about the only backstory we get. Hard to care about that popular girl getting stalked when all we know is that she's a white supremacist and quite literally, we only just learned that just before the bloodshed.

You see the problem? Our main heroine Makani, played by Sydney Park, fares far better thanks to being given something to work with, and a relatively strong performance. She's got a lot of secrets actually, ranging from her forbidden love with the school's bad boy Oliver (Théodore Pellerin) to something much darker. We see brief flashes of her primary private past throughout the runtime, and although I appreciated being asked to try and piece together what happened, I wasn't totally satisfied with what she actually had to say.

Her outcast group of friends are sadly lame, some defined only by their hobby. Take Darby, played by Jesse LaTourette, who's only character development involves loving NASA (and donuts, in a throwaway line). I won't spoil whether or not our would-be astronaut lives to the end credits, but I can confirm that we never make it to space.

We watch as teenager after teenager holds a phone only to try and run instead of calling the police, or dial the police but then hang up, as we the audience groan at the onscreen stupidity. Yes I know that this is a slasher film, but if you're going to settle on being yet another dumb horror film, at least make it distinct. Where's the creative deaths? The excessive nudity? Where's the exploitation?! "There's Someone Inside Your House" doesn't know it's own idiocy, or know any better.