"Intruders" (2012)

Intruders

Rated R

(terror, horror violence, some sexuality/nudity and language)

1 Hour 40 Minutes

Starring

Clive Owen

Ella Purnell

Carice Van Houten

Pilar Lopez de Ayala

Izan Corchero

Story

Two children living in different countries are visited nightly by a faceless being who wants to take possession of them.

Rotten Tomatoes Score

33%

"Intruders has a fantastic first act but then settles into a bland plot and scare tactics that aren't all too scary."

My Grade

C

**This review WILL contain major plot spoilers**

Intruders is less of a horror movie and more of a pyschological thriller by the end. If you are expecting a full on horror movie with a full on horror movie type monster...you may be dissapointed by how this movie turns out. None of this is to say Intruders is a bad film, because I honestly did not think it was. It's just not what I was expecting from the trailer. The movie follows two stories: a young boy and his mother are terrorized by a faceless entity. They seek the help of the church but no one seems to believe them and they think she is crazy. The other story follows a father played by Clive Owen (Sin City, Closer) and daughter who are experiencing the same thing. The girl finds a story about a man named hollowface who sneaks into the bedrooms of children looking to steal their faces. Once she reads this story, is when the faceless creature starts to haunt her.



The film cuts back and forth between both stories and you begin to wonder when they will tie them both together. When they finally do reveal the connection, it does also reveal a bit of a twist. Essentially the young boy and his mother is actually Clive Owen as a child. His jail ridden father came back to steal him away and after a bit fight the father falls to his death. The mother then convinces him none of this happened and that it was just a nightmare. So the young Clive Owen writes the story of Hollowface and the even was so traumatic he imagines this creature coming back for him each night. Cut to many years later and now his own daughter finds his story and immediately beings to imagine the creature. A shrink in the film suggests the idea of folie a deux. Where two connected people can experience the same exact psychosis and see the same hallucinations. Through DNA I suppose? I don't know, I'm no doctor. So you can believe that premise or you can believe like some do, that this hollwface is an actual spirit coming back to torment Clive Owen and his family. I like to believe the mental aspect.

That's why I enjoyed this movie in the end. It's a story that lets the audience use their imagination to figure out what was going on the whole time. There is no precise spoon fed solution given to you. A lot of people think it's annoying when films don't give a solid answer, but I don't understand why. When movies provoke people to think it adds to a much greater experience. Not every movie has to be like Transformers where everything is just mindless and things go boom. There are a LOT of films out there that do inspire you to create your own conclusion. Now I'm not saying that Intruders is a sophisticated art house film, because it's far from that. But it leaves a slightly open ending, which is something I like.

It's labeled as a horror movie, even though Clive Owen has come out saying "It's your typical kind of horror film". The first half of the film would be the perfect formula for a classic horror movie. Faceless creater sneaks in a childs room in the middle of the night to steal their face. If it went the typical horror film route, it would have ended with something like the child's story came to life via their imagination and they had to somehow physically defeat this monster. That's the direction I thought it was going, but it kind of threw me for a loop in the end. The ending was disappointing in the sense that everything that was happening was not actually happening (if you look at it the way I did) so it means the characters were never in any physical danger. However, I appreciate the ending at the same time because it didn't go the cliched route. Was it an amazing ending? No. Was it completely original? Nope. But still managed to surpass my personal expectations which I liked.

That being said, I personally did not find the movie to be all that scary. Take that with a grain of salt though, because I have seen so many damn scary movies over the years that I have become immune to the creepy factor. Jump scenes will still get me from time to time, but this one didn't really have many of those. It relied more on psychological fear rather than in your face scares. It's nice when "horror" movies do that from time to time. The writing was good, I didn't really pick up on any overly cheesy dialog. I think it could have done with some better backstory and character development though. Given that they provided us a bigger than you would have expected ending that relied soley on the characters and their history...a little more depth would have been cool. The movie was also SUPER dark. It was hard to see half the movie. While this effect works well with films like this, you still have to be able to see the damn movie. But it really wasn't that bothersome.

Overall, I think Intruders was a "horror" movie with good intentions that didn't pan out perfectly. But for what it's worth, I think the movie works out OK in the end. It's not without it's flaws, but you know...it's alright. It benefits from some pretty solid writing and decent performances. They setting was a little to dark for me, but it still has a very grim atmospher that works well for the most part. I did not love Intruders, and would not watch it again or buy it on DVD. But as a one time viewing, I think it was a decent flick.