The Intruder ★★★☆☆ | Movie Review

Synopsis

A couple buys a beautiful house out in the country from a friendly but lonely man who's moving across the country to live with his daughter, but as the days tick by it's clear that he's not going anywhere.

Review

Listed on IMDb as drama, horror, mystery and thriller... missing genre? Hilarious comedy. Honestly, this was much more ridiculous than I expected it to be.

Annie and Scott Russell buy a large property in the country from Charlie Peck. He's a widower and his daughter wants him to move in with them in Florida so he's reluctantly selling his family home. He's sad to see the place go but he likes the couple and thinks they'll be right at home there.

Once they've moved in everything seems idyllic. They unpack, start redecorating and plan to have guests, but neither of them were expecting their first guest to be Charlie. He makes excuses that he's been delayed and wanted to offer some help, but the truth is he's taken a shine to Annie. Scott gets an uneasy feeling about the whole situation but events start to work against him as the danger becomes all too real.

What the title of the film doesn't give away, the trailer does. The Intruder has a lot of its impact snatched away before you've even taken your seat in the cinema. The idea isn't exactly a new one, Breaking In did it last year, Better Watch Out, Halloween, Scream, Home Alone... home invasion is common movie practice. The twist in this one was interesting, I guess, but I'm not sure that street-savvy city folk (even kind-hearted ones like Annie) would be that accommodating to Charlie. Particularly as Annie is eventually quite quick on her feet with situations later in the film, Start of film Annie and end of film Annie should have a little more in common than they do.

Meagan Good and Michael Ealy are both in a film I love, Think Like A Man, they appeared in a fair few other things that you'd recognise too. They've got great screen presence, and I was looking forward to seeing them in the leads here. Apart from one storyline between them, I thought the rest of their interactions worked well. Had there not been the chemistry between them I think this film would have had a very difficult time.

Then we have Joseph Sikora and Alvina August as their city friends, Mike and Rachel. They both add a much needed lighter touch to the proceedings, and Rachel at one point says something that I was DEFINITELY thinking myself.

Dennis Quaid... oh, Dennis. There's no denying that he does creepy really well. Potentially too well. Had they cranked it down a notch or five it may have tipped the scale in favour of thriller over comedy. It wasn't a comedy, but it was hilarious... you know what I'm on about. I've never seen such facial acting in my life, it's an experience, and one that me and my fellow viewers laughed at more than once. He does Charlie really well but I question that so much facial acting was needed. It didn't help that you'd get odd close-up shots, and a random moment where he gets his shirt off in a scene that feels out of place. Some choices in the script don't play out well and that, accompanied by his facial acting and camera shots, really gives Quaid a difficult role to deal with.

You know I'm fairly bad at noticing music in movies unless it's not good or epic, well there's a moment in this that I did note down. During a scene with Quaid and Ealy, we get a close-up of Charlie and Scott as they look at a wall that the couple have changed in their home improvements. We're witnessing a moment designed to show that Charlie is a little crazed when it comes to the house and he's not happy that they've replaced his tapestry with modern art. As Scott talks, partly in frame, you have Charlie in the background getting angry but trying to contain it. Quaid knocks out some of his best face acting here. The volume on Scott's talking is lowered and some dramatic music is placed over the top. It does capture the anger of the situation quite well, but it also highlights that which you will come to find even more hilarious as the film progresses.

There's a fair bit of violence in The Intruder and it's a pretty good set of sequences. Quaid is obviously the perpetrator for most of it and his creeping between these scenes adds to the anticipation of what's to come.

As I said at the beginning, it's not original, it gives you a lot of predictable moments. While it wasn't a film that felt overly long there are definitely frivolous moments of the story that could have been cut out to tighten it up. That, and a reining in on the crazy acting moments could have really changed the feel of this film. I didn't dislike The Intruder but it crept too close to the line between amusing and ridiculous, almost entirely because of the facial acting. I think I'd watch it again though, I expect it won't be long after home release that it will appear in Poundland.

What you should do

I would advise you all to watch it once. I would not advise you to spend any money on it though.

Movie thing you wish you could take home

I'm not going to lie, I wouldn't mind being able to add "licked by Dennis Quaid" to my CV like Meagan Good now can.