Netflix’s There’s Someone Inside Your House has neither thrills nor irony

A new movie on Netflix is so logic-defying and muddled, it completely loses its point. But that’s not even the worst of it.

If scary movies freak you out, you don’t need to worry about any heebie jeebies in There’s Someone Inside Your House.

Because there is nothing scary about Netflix’s teen slasher flick, despite the spurting blood and mounting body count. Nor is it so ridiculous that it’s funny.

Which means There’s Someone Inside Your House is the worst kind of horror movie – without any thrills or irony. Urgh, what is even the point?

Especially when the film, adapted from a popular novel by Stephanie Perkins, has so many laboured points, and we’re not talking about the killer’s sharp-edged, glinting knife.

This is a movie that wants you to know that it has IMPORTANT things to say, but then makes a total hash out of saying anything, despite murdering all pretence of subtext. It’s both confused and confusing.

‘What’s your favourite scary movie?’ Picture: David Bukach/Netflix

Like its many, many predecessors in the genre, there’s a deranged killer picking off high school students. This one does it while exposing their secrets and wearing a 3D-printed mask of their victim.

There’s a point to the masks but when it’s explained, it doesn’t really make any sense.

Did they deserve to be brutally murdered for their sins? It’s not a question the movie is interested in asking, which would’ve been fine if it didn’t literally ask it in the opening credits.

The first secrets exposed are homophobia and white supremacy, so it at least seems like there’s a pattern to the deaths, especially when you contrast it against the film’s hero group, an assemblage of outsiders with diverse cultural backgrounds and sexualities.

But a person is murdered for having an addiction to painkillers, and somehow an individual trapped in the opioid epidemic is of the same moral equivalence as a white supremacist.

And there’s a thing about making bongs out of Nazi memorabilia as if it’s a progressive co-opting of hate symbols? Plus, throw in some stuff about predatory land grabs by the rich and whether or not police forces should be disbanded.

There’s just so much going on, and yet, also, nothing going on. Certainly nothing you care about.

Oh yeah, there’s a cornfield, because of course there is. Picture: David Bukach/Netflix

The characterisations are so shallow it extends only so far as costuming a few characters in the 90s aesthetic of a Backstreet Boy or Moesha-era Brandy.

It doesn’t invest in anyone’s story except for the lead, Makani (Sydney Park), who has her own secret that could make her a victim – but whatever’s going on there gets lost in the general muddle.

All those failings could be semi-forgiven if There’s Someone Inside Your House did the one thing that was promised on the box – be frightening.

Instead, there are a handful of flat chase sequences, some dull stabby stabs and blood splatter, all executed without any tension or suspense. Your heartbeat will be as steady as if you were choosing between regular or salt-reduced tomato sauce.

It’s particularly disappointing when you consider that among the film’s producers are James Wan (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring) and Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Date Night), two experienced hands who know either horror or comedy.

And yet, There’s Someone Inside Your House has neither.

Rating: 1/5

There’s Someone Inside Your House is streaming now on Netflix

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