There’s Someone Inside Your House ending explained

Right on time for Halloween season comes There’s Someone Inside Your House, a new TV-MA teen horror movie with a twist on the classic masked killer trope.

This Netflix original slasher film based on the novel was brought to life by Atomic Monster Productions (Annabelle, The Conjuring 2, Lights Out) and 21 Laps Entertainment (Stranger Things, Shadow and Bone, Free Guy).

There’s Someone Inside Your House gives a fresh cast of believable teen victims. Sydney Park stars as Makani Young, a senior transfer student with a mysterious past who leads her friends in their attempt to survive a serial killer. This slasher film manages to create a buyable story with a realistic script, instead of the cringeworthy Hollywood versions with 30-year-olds unconvincingly playing teens.

Spoiler warning: Here’s a recap of what happens in the movie and the ending explained!

What happens in There’s Someone Inside Your House?

Makani and her friends at Osborne High School aren’t your average heroes. They’re a tight-knit group of social semi-outcasts who are satisfied living in their own bubble: Darby, Rodrigo, Alex and Zach. There’s Someone Inside Your House provides a platform for marginalized individuals to take charge of their own destinies while creating a space to talk about oppression and discrimination in their small Nebraska town.

Makani’s group isn’t exactly heartbroken when the killer’s first victim, Jackson, is found dead in his own home. A video is released city-wide of Jackson brutally hazing a fellow football player, Caleb. How do you mourn someone at the same time you find out they did something terrible?

After a second murder, this time white-supremacist student council president Katie, the police department decides to question all high school seniors. Makani’s ex-boyfriend, Ollie, is creepy enough to fit the loner serial killer description but seems too obvious of a suspect. Although Makani has been ignoring him since the beginning of school, he still is a source of comfort to her.

Zach (the son of an abusive political candidate who runs the town’s corn industry) decides to throw a “Secret” Party to effectively reveal personal secrets and take away the killer’s weapon. Little do her friends know, Makani was the victim of an assault that led her to push a girl into a bonfire.

Unfortunately, the party turns into a bloodbath when the killer launches another attack, this time against Rodrigo, revealing that he’s been addicted to painkillers. He’s brutally killed outside Zach’s house, one of the murder weapons being a taser. Rodrigo’s murder hits the main characters hard, and the school is closed down through the month of October. Alex takes Rodrigo’s death the hardest and is convinced Ollie is the culprit, but he’s untouchable due to being the police deputy’s younger brother.

Later, Ollie takes Makani on a trip to an “ocean” of cornfields, hoping to establish a real relationship instead of sneaking around. He reveals he knows of Makani’s tragic past, adding to the anxiety of finding a taser in Ollie’s glove box. Makani leaves in a panic and is escorted by the ever-present Uber driver Dave to her empty house.

Things take a turn for the worse when Makani wakes up in the middle of the night to her safety precautions disabled. Makani manages to escape murder when Alex comes to her house just in time to save her… but her secret has already been revealed. Makani believes her assailant is Ollie, who is taken into custody.

While recovering in the hospital, Makani tells her friends her story of being hazed by seniors while on the varsity swim team. She pushed one of her teammates into a bonfire, leaving her with permanent scars. Although Makani was acquitted of charges and moved to Nebraska, the memories still haunt her. Makani’s friends accept her past as her past and the group becomes closer because of it.

Ollie is released from custody by his brother and goes straight to Makani, who is alone at the school waiting for her friends. As she runs away, she finds Caleb, but he’s stabbed by the killer, who puts the bloody knife in Makani’s hands. Ollie then shows up and saves Caleb, revealing himself as a red herring.

Nearby, the city is having their annual corn festival, the killer’s next target. Makani, Ollie, Darby and Alex race to the festival to try and save Zach, arriving to see that the entire cornfield has been set ablaze. They drive straight through the corn maze to try and create a path of escape for the people inside.

Makani and Ollie venture farther into the corn maze to look for Zach. They find the killer just in time to watch him kill Zach’s father… but who is the killer? None other than the friend they’ve been looking for.

In an intense but darkly witty climax, Zach stabs Ollie and explains how work-intensive the killing process has been. He starts a rant about how he’s been denying who he was: Why should he feel bad about growing up with privilege? Everyone in society wears a mask, just like the ones he’s been making of his victims.

Zach’s goal is to show people who they really are. Now, he plans to blame all the murders on Makani: Jackson, Katie, Rodrigo, Ollie and his father. In a chilling twist, Makani manages to kill Zach first, stabbing him twice.

Sometime later, life has returned to normal. Makani and Ollie pose for prom pictures, Alex, Darby, and Caleb prepare for college, and Makani decides to call the former teammate she burned. Makani gives a heartfelt speech at graduation, concluding the movie with her own poetry.

Why is Zach the murderer in There’s Someone Inside Your House?

Zach Sandford is just as much of a hypocrite as the society he despises. He appears to be close friends with Makani, Alex, Rodrigo and Darby, but really feels like an outcast everywhere. He lives in the shadow of his father, a greedy politician whose power is despised citywide.

Even though his friends accept him, Zach can’t ignore the privilege he has, which sets him apart from others. He feels shame for being born into a family that burns the world in exchange for wealth, egged on by the harassment he receives from classmates for being a Sandford.

Zach turns his anger outwards instead of dealing with his emotions in a constructive way. His ideology turns into a sense of loathing for the society that’s forced him to feel this way. Instead of attempting to redefine himself as Makani did, Zach blames everyone else around him for his own shortcomings.

His aim to reveal secrets was grounded in wanting to prove humanity as inherently evil. Zach fell headfirst into a hole he dug for himself. He felt that society wanted him to be ashamed of his privilege, so he attempted to destroy society instead of confronting his own emotions.

There’s Someone Inside Your House is at its core a commentary on the toxic viewpoint a late-capitalist society imbues in people. You can make a comparison of Zach to Sung-woo in Squid Game, who were both manipulated by a competitive system to see people as enemies who uphold an imperfect society.

Zach could not handle the corrosive effects of his father’s work and decided to walk towards the evil instead of working against it to create a better world.

What does Makani’s poem mean in There’s Someone Inside Your House?

Makani’s writing is peppered throughout the film. The movie ends with one of her longer poems, which she recites at Osborne High School graduation:

"I said, my youth is gone. Like a fire beaten out by the rain. That will never sway and sing or play in the wind again. I said, it is no great sorrow that quenched my youth in me, but only little sorrows beating endlessly. I thought my youth was gone, but all of you returned like a flame at the call of the wind. It leaped and burned, threw off its ashen cloak, and gowned itself like new. Gave itself like a secret whispered once more to all of you."

Makani is referencing her personal story as well as the nature of humanity as a force of good. After her traumatic experience, she couldn’t help but see the bad in society. She believed her innocence had been destroyed and her youth lost. Although Makani tried to create a new life for herself in Nebraska, she couldn’t face her past.

The support from her friends and family is what gave Makani hope. Even though she had been through such sorrow, the people she trusted kept her afloat. In fact, telling her secret created an even closer bond.

In her poem, Makani hopes to convey that there’s still good in the world if you look for it. If you’re willing to trust others with your insecurities and secrets, you can become a better version of yourself.

What did you think of There’s Someone Inside Your House?