Overall it's OK that ‘There’s Someone Inside Your House’
Netflix
If you’re out on something that can be described as “Saved by the Bell: The Reboot: The Movie: The Nightmare,” that’s fine. It’s also your loss. “There’s Someone Inside Your House,” which has nothing to do with “Saved by the Bell” but shares a group dynamic and a topicality with the recent (very good) Peacock reboot of the classic series, is likewise better than you might think.
And please resist the temptation to call it “Scream” meets “Saw,” although the film, directed by Patrick Brice (“Creep,” “The Overnight”) and adapted from the novel by Stephanie Perkins, does blend a slasher whodunit with disturbed moralizing by a depraved maniac. In a small Nebraska town, someone is killing teenagers while exposing their worst deeds to everyone via text, because apparently if the town is small enough you have truly every person’s number in your phone. Is it one of Makani’s (Sydney Park) classmates? Her summer boyfriend Ollie (Theodore Pellerin)? Or, dun-dun-dun, the only Uber drive in town (Ryan Bell)?
What might sound generic feels surprisingly relevant at a time when people’s secrets and previously hidden, terrible beliefs have bubbled to the surface. That isn’t to say Brice or Henry Gayden quite know how to wrangle that examination; the killer calls people out for a wide variety of offenses that don’t all belong on the same plane, and there’s a missed opportunity to pair the location of the attacks with the crimes committed, or even just following through on the concept of trust violated. In one of the most searing moments, a football player scores an easy touchdown because everyone else on site is glued to their phones and the traumatic footage they’ve just received. The film does an effective job of capturing the shock of a community punctured by violence, while numerous capital-letter issues (police reform, white privilege, systemic racism) underline the proceedings without necessarily coalescing into a message about them.
But “There’s Someone Inside Your House” never feels cheap in its efforts to prove itself modern. Makani’s group of friends, which includes a Black girl, a rich white blonde boy, a transgender boy, and a Latino boy, exists to depict the U.S. as it is, and the movie plays with horror conventions with more success than the disappointing “Freaky” and more purpose than the entertaining splatterfest “The Babysitter.” Throughout is a tension between the scary world out there and the young people trying to exist in it, warts and all. There’s another movie, or just more movie, to be made about reconciling the mistakes of otherwise good people, or the ability of awful people to appear innocent. As is, enter with caution.
B-
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