He's Out There is a 2018 American slasher film directed by Dennis Iliadis (credited as Quinn Lasher) and written by Mike Scannell.

With her husband Shawn planning to arrive later, Laura takes her two young daughters, Kayla “K.K.” and Madison “Maddie”, to a remote lake house for their annual family getaway.

When they arrive, area resident Owen mentions that the family who previously lived in the house had a son named John who went missing.

While playing outside, Kayla and Maddie follow a long red string, which leads to a tea party set up in the middle of the forest, where there are two cupcakes on the table.

After hearing unsettling noises from upstairs, Laura goes out to her car to search for her cellphone and finds a strange doll in the backseat.

Shawn then follows a red string into the forest where mannequins are positioned like a family in effigy around the tea party.

Downstairs, Laura finds the doll in the kitchen, along with a storybook altered with handmade pages depicting John's plan to kill everyone.

They run to Shawn's car, only to find presents in the back seat, and their mother bound and gagged in the trunk.

John swings his axe into Laura's side, gets in the car and drives toward the girls, chasing them back to the house.

On March 11, 2016, Screen Gems hired Dennis Iliadis to direct a horror thriller film He's Out There, from a script by Mike Scannell, which would be produced by Bryan Bertino and Adrienne Biddle of Unbroken Pictures.

[2] Screen Gems initially had distribution rights to the film, but dropped it, after which it was acquired by Vertical Entertainment.