Netflix’s There’s Someone Inside Your House brings the novel to gory life, but who is the killer and what are their motivations in the twist ending of this teen slasher? There’s Someone Inside Your House is the latest horror offering from Netflix, and is an adaptation of Stephanie Perkins’ 2017 novel of the same name. Throughout the movie, a group of misfit teens are stalked by a killer who wears a mask bearing the face of each of their victims.
After each kill, the murderer also reveals each victim’s secrets via social media, and it is not long before they rack up a considerable body count. Viewers familiar with the source material may think they know where There’s Someone Inside Your House is heading but, like Netflix’s recent adaptation of No One Gets Out Alive, the book’s ending is changed completely for the movie. As such, the movie's ending is guaranteed to surprise even those who know the novel well.
The ending of There’s Someone Inside Your House reveals the dark past that haunts hero Makani before finally unmasking the killer. Throughout the story, brief flashbacks hint at Makani’s involvement in some unspecified tragedy before she moved to a small town in rural Nebraska. This is, of course, used as a red herring to imply she may be a suspect or that she may have killed someone before. The truth is less dramatic, as a scene late in There’s Someone Inside Your House shows Makani was involved in a hazing accident that went out of control. As far as twists go the limp reveal isn't as inspired as the recent horror Malignant, but learning the truth behind her past does let the film finally reveal its true killer.
What Happens In There’s Someone Inside Your House’s Ending
The killer breaks into Makani’s home and covers the walls with photos of Jasmine, the girl whose severe burns the protagonist accidentally caused when she pushed her into a bonfire. The killer tases Makani and douses her in gasoline, but is unable to murder her before her friend Alex arrives and forces them to flee. Makani comes clean about her past to friends Zach, Darby, and Alex, comfortably certain the killer who attacked her was her love interest Ollie. However, the next day the slasher strikes again and Ollie immediately arrives on the scene, disproving this theory. As Makani, Darby, Alex, and Ollie race to a town festival being held in a local cornfield, the movie finally unmasks its Michael Myer-style slasher villain. The killer turns out to be none other than Zach, the privileged heir to a local property tycoon’s fortune. Despite talking a big game about despising his wealth, he reveals himself to be a duplicitous monster who wanted to kill the high school’s students for what he became sickened by their hypocrisy.
What Was Zach’s Plan?
Judging by his monologue shortly before Makani manages to subdue and finally slay him, Zach intended to kill off most of his graduating class before pinning the crimes on Makani and murdering her. This explains his decision to burn down the cornfield, thus potentially trapping and killing dozens, as it calls to mind Makani’s unfortunate bonfire accident. Killers pinning their crimes on innocent victims is not an unfamiliar trope in the subgenre, with Scream’s movie-obsessed baddies Billy and Stu framing Sidney’s father for their crimes and Scream 4’s Jill framing Sidney. However, the fact Zach attempted to burn Makani alive in her house a few scenes earlier makes his plan harder to follow, as he could hardly pin the cornfield killings on her if she was already dead. However, he may have planned to frame Ollie instead if his first attempt on Makani's life had worked out (which appeared to work, with even Makani assuming Ollie was the culprit at that point).
What Does Makani’s Ending Poem Mean?
In the closing moments of There’s Someone Inside Your House, Makani recites a poem about how her youth has been ended by a million small sorrows, only to then say that her youth has returned to her, reborn like a phoenix. The horror movie’s ending doesn’t make the connection between this poem and the climax immediately obvious, as Makani’s recital is accompanied by images of her surviving friends going on to brighter futures after graduation. However, on further reflection, it becomes clear the poem is intended to represent how Makani, by turning the image of fire from a recurring traumatic flashback to a triumphant image of rebirth, has been able to share her secrets and shed her shame. Her classmates who died were unable to show their true selves before the killer revealed them in death, whereas Makani was able to call Jasmine and reconnect with the girl she injured, rather than hiding from her past.
What Is The Real Meaning of There’s Someone Inside Your House’s Ending?
Like Netflix's recent comedy-drama The Starling's ending, the conclusion of There’s Someone Inside Your House reaches for profundity but is a little muddled in its message. The killer, Zach, rails against the hypocrisy of his victims. However, other than the seemingly sweet valedictorian who secretly harbored white supremacist sympathies, none of his victims seem particularly hypocritical. Rodrigo is addicted to painkillers, but he never takes issue with his friends using drugs and doesn’t lecture anyone. Meanwhile, the boorish football player killed in the opening brutally beat a classmate during hazing, but everything about his behavior in the sequence implies he would own up to that fact with no shame.
Meanwhile, Makani’s triumphant claim that Zach is the problem and shouldn’t blame other people rings hollow when two of his victims were a violent bully and a white supremacist, both of whom hoped to avoid any responsibility for their actions. Where the ending of Netflix’s No One Gets Out Alive posed a moral quandary for horror fans by making its lead character complicit in the violence of the story, There’s Someone Inside Your House’s ending offers a more simplistic parable. The villain is irredeemable, the heroes are unimpeachable and the limp message seems to be that, since everyone has secrets, exposing them is no better than ignoring them.