Chatting With Writer Henry Gayden and Director Patrick Brice About Their Film, ‘There’s Someone Inside Your House’

I love teen slashers. Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend… I love them all. If I believed in guilty pleasures, this would absolutely be one of mine. So when a new one pops up, I have to watch it. There’s Someone Inside Your House is a fun and gory addition to the genre that recently premiered on Netflix. It’s also based on a bestselling book of the same name, by Stephanie Perkins. While the film differs quite a bit from the literary version, it keeps with the spirit Perkins created. To celebrate the release of the film on Netflix, I chatted with writer Henry Gayden and director Patrick Brice about how the project came about, and what they hope audiences take away from the film.

PopHorror: Thank you so much for your time. I loved the book and the movie blew my expectations out of the water. How did this project come about?

Henry Gayden: It started when Dan Cohen, our producer who works on Stranger Things, brought me the book. It was 200, 190 pages. I was like, “Yes! 190 pages?” I read that and I was like, “Wait, this is the first half.” And then he was like, “Right.” I said, “That was intentional, wasn’t it?” Because I was already hooked. And then I read the second half, and I don’t know. My mind just immediately sparked to it. You’ve read the book. You love it. What it had, to me, was what I wanted in a slasher… layered and emotionally rich characters. Having that as a starting point was everything I needed. So we put the pitch together, took it around, sold it to Netflix, and then found the perfect director. That’s how it came about, in short. There’s a lot of things that happened.

PopHorror: What were the challenges of adapting a best selling book and keeping the spirit of the original story?

Henry Gayden: I do a thing – I told Patrick [Brice] about this – where when I’m adapting something, I usually take my favorite scenes and I just write them out myself onto Final Draft to get a feel of the language and texture and characters. I felt pretty connected to them throughout, so I made some changes, which you saw. All of those changes were, I thought, still honoring what [Author Stephanie Perkins] wanted and was doing with those characters. Even changing the villain and the MO was still, I think, honest to what the story was about. And I was getting her approval throughout. She was thrilling and wonderful to work with.

PopHorror: What do you hope people walk away with after watching this?

Patrick Brice: I hope people have a thrilling, fun experience with this movie. I also think, ideally… My dream is that people connect with these characters emotionally and these great performances from these young actors. We have the benefit of being able to cast folks who weren’t necessarily known names.

PopHorror: I love that!

Patrick Brice: We just cast the best person for each role, and I think the movie is the movie it is because of that. It’s because of this combination of kids who all have this other level of emotional performance going on that isn’t fully detectable because it’s just so natural for all of them. For me, that heightens the stakes. That makes you care when one of these people is in peril or is dying or things are going south. And so, I hope people walk away with maybe a slightly deeper connection than they would normally have with a slasher movie, you know?

PopHorror: I think you do, and I think the diversity of the cast really helps that. You really are on a bigger emotional level with them because they’re so real.

Patrick Brice: Oh, thank you. Our hope with that too, is that with some of the subject matter, and how the film relates to being a contemporary horror movie, I really love the fact that the script went to the places that it did in terms of having a non-binary character as one of its leads. But at the same time, not feeling overly woke or patting ourselves on the back with this. It was just something that was present in the film and that feels like progress to me.

Henry Gayden: I hope that people have Secret Parties.

Thank you so much, Henry and Patrick, for taking the time to speak with us. Be sure to catch There’s Someone Inside Your House, now on Netflix!