Director: Patrick Brice

Writer: Henry Gayden

Starring: Sydney Park, Théodore Pellerin, Asjha Cooper, Jesse LaTourette, Diego Josef, Dale Whibley and Burkely Duffield

Rating: ★★½

Based on the novel of the same name by Stephanie Perkins, There’s Someone Inside Your House, arrives on Netflix just in time for Halloween. It’s a standard, no thrills attached, slasher film. There is nothing to really set it apart from the long lineage of the films in the genre, but it’s still fun to watch and that’s all you really need from a slasher film.

This time around the killer wears 3D printed masks of their victim as they kill them. The motive is all about exposing secrets. The first death in the cold opening, a slasher standard, is a high school football player who’s also a bully. No one turned him in after he beat someone viciously the previous year. He wakes up to find his phone missing and pictures of the incident all over the walls of his house. As he dies the rest of the school receive texts with the pictures of the beating. From there on out, each killing is the same, secrets exposed and everyone discovering the truth. Makani (Sydney Park) and her friends are all students at the high school and each of them have secrets of their own.

There’s Someone Inside Your House is a template slasher film. The group of main characters are high school students, they are shaken by the deaths around them, there’s a party sequence, a character that is set up to be the killer but ultimately isn’t, the deaths get closer and closer to the main group and then there’s a reveal that you’ll probably figure out beforehand. There is still some fun to be had with the film, the characters are interesting and feel developed. The second killing of an overachieving student, who also runs a far-right podcast, is a good scene, involving the almost satirical (and probably too close to the truth) podcast playing through a church’s speakers while she hides in a confessional booth.

The killings are quick, and you’re never left too long without another one. The deaths aren’t spectacularly creative. For the most part it’s just knives and tasers. The plot moves quickly to its conclusion with a run time of barely eighty minutes (plus over ten minutes of credits). It’s not scary, but it has entertaining moments, and the plot is interesting enough as you figure out who the killer is. If you’ve seen a slasher before then you know what you’re getting.

There’s Someone Inside Your House is a standard slasher, and that’s about it. Horror fans have seen it all before and there’s nothing new to be found. There’s still some fun to be had, but this won’t be replacing something like Scream in anyone’s yearly Halloween marathon.