By Troy Ribeiro

Oct 7: Film: There's Someone Inside Your House (Streaming on Netflix)

Duration: 96 minutes

Director: Patrick Brice. Cast: Sydney Park, Theodore Pellerin, Asjha Cooper, Dale Whibley, Jesse LaTourette, Diego Josef, Burkely Duffield, Sarah Dugdale, William MacDonald, Andrew Dunbar and Markian Tarasiuk.

IANS Rating: **1/2

Based on Stephanie Perkins's novel of the same name, this is a slasher film. It begins with a promise.

Jackson, the star footballer from Osborne High school, returns home to an empty house and notices an innocuous white egg timer on his kitchen table. Moments later, after a short nap, he finds the timer on his bedside table. This freaks him out.

He rushes out of his house only to find his car missing. He returns indoors only to find his pictures bullying Caleb (a gay schoolmate) plastered all over his house. Petrified, Jackson picks up a golf club to defend himself from the intruder in his house.

But soon, he is slashed in a very gory manner by an assailant wearing a mask resembling him (Jackson).

Soon, Katie, a student of the same school, is killed in the church. The town is on high alert as the killer is on the prowl, choosing as victims people with shameful secrets.

Thrown into a whirlwind of chaos, as the school reels from the murders, Makani (Sydney Park), who has recently relocated from Hawaii along with a few of her close friends and are obvious targets, go down a rabbit hole trying to stop their classmates from getting slaughtered.

There may be a series of deaths and gore in slasher genre films, but in this one, bloody does not equal scary.

The film lacks in the horror perspective, but it more than makes up for it with well-developed characters and a killer who preys on secrets. The narrative keeps you hooked with the mystery of the masked killer, but there is no deeper meta-level to this narrative.

Also, there are no nail-biting moments -- and attempts to notch up tension in certain scenes lead to predictable events.

On the performance front, Makani Young (Sydney Park) and her friends -- Caleb (Burkely Duffield), Alex (Asjha Cooper), Darby (Jesse LaTourette), Rodrigo (Diego Josef), Zach (Dale Whibley), and the brooding Oliver Larsson (Théodore Pellerin) -- all of them are competent and shine in their characters.

Overall, the film is competently shot and staged as a perfect mindless horror film, but it does have its charms. There are bursts of good dialogues and a few laugh-out-loud moments.