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I’ve really been enjoying the recent flood of screen adaptations of horror and mystery books – the Fear Street movies were a lot of fun, Panic was very flawed but fun to watch, and I’m excited for One Of Us Is Lying to come out very soon, just in time for Halloween!
No has really been talking about ‘There’s Someone Inside Your House’ though, which I find surprising since the book is fairly a popular YA book, the movie is co-produced by James Wan (The Conjuring) and Shawn Levy (Stranger Things), 2 VERY popular directors/producers. And it’s on a big platform like Netflix. But maybe now that it’s out the buzz will pick up?
The story is based on the book of the same name by Stephanie Perkins, about the students at a Nebraska high school being targeted by a masked murderer who exposes the darkest secret of each victim. It stars Sydney Park as Makani Young, a new girl running away from her secretly dark past. The movie was directed by Patrick Brice.
I didn’t read the book before the movie came out – I meant to, and tried, but I just couldn’t really get into it from the beginning. But I LOVE slashers – it’s one of my favorite horror tropes. I also really like Sydney Park as an actress, so I was super excited to see how this would turn out.
With this movie, I felt a strong influence from the movie Scream:
- The masked killer / slasher trope
- The small town
- Students being murdered
- The main girl with a dark past
- The mysterious boyfriend
- The “mean” girl best friend
- The quirky group of friends
- The parents who are conveniently never around
There’s nothing wrong with that, and I actually appreciate the homage to what happens to be one of my favorite horror movies of all time. But this movie was just nowhere near the same level of Scream. I can’t compare it to the book, but the writing for this movie just didn’t do it for me. It’s very predictable, there’s almost no attempt at making us suspicious of the characters (except for one), and the killer’s reveal and motive are just very underwhelming. I also didn’t feel much of a connection to any of the characters except for one, and that person died right after that connection was felt. 🙃 So the movie felt pretty empty for me.
However, I thought the director did a great job with this movie. The kills looked great and although the scenes didn’t build tension as well as I would like, they were still the best parts of the movie and I found myself looking forward to the next one. I also loved the touch of the masks the killer was wearing, which looked really cool. There was a particular scene with a window that I loved and found really creepy. 😆
As a horror fan I always look forward to those kinds of scenes, but movies like Scream do a much better job of building tension and atmosphere in the story long before those scenes come along, so that they are even creepier when you get to them.
I wasn’t too familiar with Patrick Brice as a director, but once I looked him up I realized he directed Creep and a few episodes of Room 104, which I love.
Overall I’d have to say There’s Someone Inside Your House was just ok. But I love the idea of these screen adaptations of horror books, so I hope they do something like this again soon.
