Review: They're Inside

Director: John-Paul Panelli 

Screenplay: Schuyler Brumley and John-Paul Panelli 

Year: 2019

Synopsis: A group of filmmakers decides to film a movie in a secluded house. After arriving at this place strange things starts happening, which add to the growing tension between the two sisters in charge of the project. Two masked strangers with ideas to develop their own filming project join them. 

In my last review, I talked about the movie “Trespassers”, that dwells on the home invasion topic and seems to be inspired in “The Strangers”. “They’re Inside” also dwells on this topic and also seems to be inspired by “The Strangers”, and, like “Trespassers”, puts its own twist on this horror film subgenre. 

The plot of “They’re Inside” can result a bit confusing, but the opening scene has plenty of information to create a good foundation for its development. In it we see the antagonists committing a crime, which they are filming, and it shows them as amateur filmmakers. This plays an important role in the rest of the movie and you can start making associations once the protagonists are met, a group of young filmmakers that go into a secluded house to film a movie. 

“They’re Inside” combines the home invasion subgenre with the found footage filming style, making use of the footage from the filmmakers' equipment as well as from security cameras. Which is presented is a weirdly edited product, which starts making sense as more information is revealed about what happened in this place.

The screenplay written by also director John-Paul Panelli and Schuyler Brumley is an interesting one because of this constant game of having a movie about creating a movie and the countless meta-references about the creative and practical process of it. Still, it suffers from leaving too much information to the viewer’s interpretation and can cause continuity issues. Also, the antagonists are not well developed, and their motives are not clear and make confusing the scenes that should have been shocking.

The story has at least two important dimensions: the relationship between two sisters that lived through a horrible event and the invaders and their motives. The first is well developed, revealing important information about how this event modified their personalities. The former is vaguely developed and losses sense and impact and makes the villains never feel scary.

"They're Inside" combines the home invasion topic with the found footage filming style to create a different movie with its own identity. Some actions are not well explained and are left for the viewer's interpretation and the antagonists are not well developed, making them not able to create the expected impact. Leaving much to the viewer’s interpretation affects the development of the plot, which is slow in parts, and can be confusing. Definitely an interesting movie with good moments.