There’s Someone Inside Your House
Director: Patrick Brice
Writer: Henry Gayden
Based on: Stephanie Perkins‘ novel
Cast: Sydney Park, Théodore Pellerin, Asjha Cooper, Dale Whibley, Jesse LaTourette, Burkely Duffield, Diego Josef, Zane Clifford, BJ Harrison
Seen on: 9.1.2022

Content Note: (critical treatmen of) queermisia, racism

Plot:
Makani (Sydney Park), Alex (Asjha Cooper), Zach (Dale Whibley), Darby (Jesse LaTourette), and Rodrigo (Diego Josef) are in the last year of high school. What should be an exciting time for them, turns gruesome when their classmates start dying, murdered in the most aweful ways. It appears that the killer targets people with dark secrets and reveals those secrets with their murder. It appears only a matter of time until Makani and her friends have to confess to theirs.

There’s Someone Inside Your House has some promise but none that it really fulfills. It remains so vague and shallow that it’s actually a bit boring.

There’s Someone Inside Your House could have gone somewhere interesting. With a central cast that is mostly made up of people of color and a non-binary person, and a villain who literally proclaims that their “dark secret” is “being born into privilege”, this could have been a film about the toxicity of this privilege, how it makes people think that they are in a position to judge, and how this assumption will ultimately turn against marginalized folks. At the beginning, when the villain goes after somebody for a homomisia and somebody else for racism, there may be a part of you where you’re still cheering. But then things become a lot more muddled, and you start to realize, oh shit, have I just fallen for the villain’s justifications?

Well. This is not the film that we got, I’m afraid. The film we did get things it portrays a generation of teens, when it doesn’t even manage to portray a fully fleshed out character. The observations are never brought into any kind of order that would give us even a working theory of what this generation is about.

It’s a pity because not only does the set-up have promise, the cast does, too. Above all Sydney Park who has charisma for days. But I also liked the clique around her who all show promise. If only they had been given better material. That material may have even become scary amd given the film some much-needed tension.

Ultimately the film gets hung up on the teenie slasher genre hallmarks and forgets its characters or any kind of deeper meaning that may have been there in the beginning. And that’s the impression that stays: yet another teenie slasher with nothing new to say.

Summarizing: very meh indeed.