Warning: This post contains spoilers for There’s Someone Inside Your House.
There’s Someone Inside Your House has the best slasher mask since Scream. When it comes to the horror genre, slasher movie disguises can struggle with being memorable. Directed by Patrick Brice, There’s Someone Inside Your House follows a group of friends who are targeted by a killer who preys on those with hidden secrets. And it’s the mask he employs to murder that stands out because it’s unique and effective.
The masked killer in There’s Someone Inside Your House turns out to be none other than Zach Sanford, a friend of Makani Young whose father was buying up people’s land in town to expand his corn business. Zach murdered people using the 3D-printed faces of his schoolmates, including Makani’s. The slasher mask isn’t merely a cover-up, however, as it elevates Zach’s own motives for killing and not wanting to hide his own identity anymore. It also underscores the very idea of the victims having to, in a disturbed and literal way, face themselves and the secrets Zach brings to the forefront. Besides it being a terrifying mask for the killer to don, it highlights the general themes of the film by using the very thing the victims are so scared of acknowledging or facing. It gives every scene in which Zach attacks a target more of a palpable feeling.
That Zach creates the masks for each intended target makes it all the more eerie, especially since he uses photos they’ve posted on social media to replicate their visage before printing it to wear. The use of 3D-printed face masks also makes the killings more creepy, personal, and emotionally effective. It makes There’s Someone Inside Your House stand out amongst other slasher films, most of which utilize Halloween-like masks that are not as effective. Not since Scream has a slasher film been as inventive with its use of villainous masks. The Scream mask played into the title and the story at its center, and so the killer’s disguise reflected that with a ghost face, its mouth frozen in a scream.
The fact the mask was inspired by Edvard Munch’s painting, aptly called “The Scream,” makes the film’s use of such a disguise all the more powerful and intense. To that end, There’s Someone Inside Your House created a similar situation that allowed the villain’s mask to be tied to the story in a genuinely horrific and eccentric way that lingers with viewers more potently than other slashers have had. Several horror films have utilized a number of disguises — 2013’s You’re Next had its killers donning animal masks, but that wasn’t particularly memorable; 2008’s The Strangers also had distinctive masks, but they were more akin to cheap Halloween garb.
However, There’s Someone Inside Your House centers around a villain who also hides, which is pertinent to the story and makes the use of 3D-printed masks feel exclusive to the narrative and its characters in a way that most horror films don’t. It’s hard for slasher films to have a memorable and unique killer, much less an artifact the character uses against their targets. And the use of other people’s faces as a mask for the villain is just one of the things the Netflix slasher film has that makes it stand out.