"There's Somebody Inside Your House": Derivative Horror with LGBTQ+ Characters

 

There's Someone Inside Your House (2021) sounds like that old campfire story: "The calls are coming from inside the house!"  But the plot description is aboit someone revealing all of the high schoolers' secrets, so maybe it's more like I Know What You Did Last Summer.  No doubt one of those secrets is about being gay.

Scene 1: Isolated farm house.  Country-Western music plays as a pickup truck drives up, and small-town high school jock Jackson (Markian Tarasiuk), complete with letterman's jacket, climbs out.  Inside, the decor is from the 1950s, but he has a cell phone!  A friend named Macon (as in Georgia, y'all) calls.  They discuss various girls, so fast and furious that I can't keep track, but one has flat chest and is therefore repugnant.

Funny -- the egg timer is on, but Mom and Dad are out tailgating before the Big Game, and there's no one in the house.  Or is there?  Besides, the Doritos taste terrible.

Jackson goes to his room -- pictures of big-breasted models and a University of Nebraska banner -- to take a nap before Kickoff.  But he falls asleep, and doesn't wake up until late at night.  The Doritos were drugged!  And someone has left a trail of pictures of him roughhousing with a cute guy!  A boyfriend?  Is the gay secret the first one?  No: the photos turn dark: we see that Jackson beat and killed Cute Guy. Then a hooded figure leaps out of the closet and stabs him! 

Scene 2:  The game.  Mom, Dad, and Sis are watching, and wondering why Jackson never showed up.  "It's not like him."  Suddenly everyone gets a video from an unidentified source: Jackson killing Cute Guy.  Wait -- Cute Guy isn't dead.  He's Caleb (Burkely Duffieldm left), playing in the game right now!  

Scene 3: Students gossipping about Jackson.  Murdered just because he beat up Caleb.  And why did he do it?  Because Caleb is gay?  But they were buddies!  Now everybody thinks Calebe is responsible for the murder.

Jackson's bff Macon sings about how much he lovoed him.   Two boys, two girls, and a nonbinary person (Darby) have trouble feeling sad, since Jackson bullied them savagely for years.  

Scene 4: Lunchtime.  Macon is bragging about how many girls Jackson had sex with, and what he did with pizza sauce (you don't want to know).  The Nice Kids from Scene 3 invite Caleb, now ostracized by the team, to sit with them.  

Student Body President talks about how diverse the school is, with gay and nonbinary students ("we love your he, she, and they!"), and leads them in prayer.

Scene 5: At home, Makani (one of the Nice Kids) worries that people might find out about the horrible things that happened in her old town.  Then her college scholarships and friends would vanish!  What did she do?

She goes up to her room and starts working on a poem. "The psycho" Oliver (Theodore Pellerinm left) texts.  Ulp -- they used to date, and now he's stalking her!  And he's #2 on the cast list!

She wakes up in the middle of the night.  Odd -- there are a lot of dishes piled on the kitchen table, and flowers in the oven.  Could it be...psych!  It was Grandma, sleepwalking!

Scene 6:  At church, prepping for the memorial service.  Catholic, like everybody in small town Middle America, right?  Student Council President is distributing memorial leaflets (why is she wearing a white hooded robe?),  when suddenly the overhead screen displays her comments on a  podcast: "White Wash: Your Daily Ethnic Cleanse."  So she's a closet racist.  A white robed figure appears and slashes her to death!  Parishioners coming into the church hear her podcast, and see her hanging from the altar.

Scene 7: The Sheriff (towns don't have sheriffs) has passed a city-wide curfew (he doesn't have the authority to do that).  Makani flashes back to the terrible thing that happened (arrested for pushing another teen into a fire).  Rodrigo (Diego Josef) from the Nice Kids calls to commisserate about the lockdown.  Uh-oh, he's taking prescription drugs.  Is he sick, or an addict?   

He reveals that he's heterosexual: "why can't I have a life where nobody gets murdered, and I get a girlfriend and go to college?"  Also, he has a crush on Alex, the other girl in the Nice Kid gang. When are we going to get a scene with the LGBTQ+ characters?

Scene 8:  The students all waiting to be interviewed by the sheriff.  Nice Kid Zack (Dale Whibley) thinks he's the murderer.  There's a referendum to dissolve the police force -- but not if he solves a series of murders "by blaming someone who's not white."  

Zach is excused from the interrogation due to his rich Dad's pull.  Dad yells at him hanging out with the Nice Kids -- bunch of losers! -- and for smoking marijuana.  

Back in the waiting room, "that psycho" Ollie asks Makani why they broke up.  Whoops, he's the Sheriff's younger brother!  The plot thickens!

Scene 9:  The Sheriff interviews Makani.  She doesn't mention the terrible thing that happened to her.  No, she didn't know Jackson or Student Body President.  He leers, makes creepy comments, and lets her go. 

After the interview, she agrees to a date with Ollie: "Let's do what we always do": park, gaze longingly at each other, listen to love songs, and have sex (no beefcake).  Ollie: "I miss this."  You miss having sex?  What a surprise!

They get an invitation to Zack's "Secret Party," and head over to his mansion.

Scene 10: At the Secret Party, Makani ignores Ollie, whom she was mounting five minutes ago.  Everybody reveals their minor secrets: "I post dick pics online."  "I eat junk food."  "I sing opera on youtube."  Darby "confesses" that they got into a NASA program. They appear to be hanging out with Caleb, the gay jock from Scene 4.  Maybe they're dating?  

The extremely troubled and drunken Zack announces the biggest secret: his  "festering pustule" of a Dad doesn't just oppress the townsfolk, he has the tenth largest collection of Nazi memorabilia in North America.  That doesn't sound like a lot.  How many collectors of Nazi memorabilia can there be?  He's converted most of the weapons into bongs for smoking pot.

The guests grab various Nazi items and start smoking.  Rodrigo pops a prescription pill, then talks his crush into going into the kitchen for sex.  Maybe a more secluded spot?  People will be coming in for snacks all the time.  

Scene 11:  Back at the party, Rodrigo sees a trail of pills.  Uh-oh, now the Nice Kids are being targeted.  Suddenly everyone gets a text about his addiction to Fentanyl (a prescription opioid), and the hooded killer appears.  Everyone runs out -- past the killer?  -- leaving Rodrigo to get sliced and diced. Or -- there's one killer and 200 party guests?  A little help?  

I'm out of space, so I'll stop the scene-by-scene recap there.  

Beefcake: None.

LGBTQ+ Characters:  Caleb gets stabbed without having a secret (just so the killer can frame Makani).  He doesn't die.  But he also doesn't have a centric or any plot development; he just hangs out with the others.  Darby also has no centric; their only plot point is getting into NASA and telling Makani "I'm here for you."

Heterosexism: Makani and Ollie spend half the movie kissing.

There's Someone Inside Your House:  Not usually: your house, someone else's house, a church, or the school.  The final conflict takes place in a corn maze.

The Killer: Exactly who you expect.  It's broadcast loudly practically from Scene 1: the actor keeps channeling Matthew Lillard's character in Scream.

My Grade: C.  Just having LGBTQ+ characters in a movie is no longer cause for celebration.  They need to do something other than tell the cisgender heterosexual characters "I'm here for you."