The Intruder (Review)
The Intruder Fails to Leave an Impression.
There have been a lot of good home invasion movies over the years. The Intruder is not one of them. The film tries desperately to be a taut thriller but fails to build any tension, even despite an impressive performance from Dennis Quaid. It’s a film that embraces the idiocy of its heroes and gives the audience plenty of opportunities to groan as they make one stupid mistake after another. Unfortunately, that’s not how you build suspense, only resentment.
The Intruder follows a young couple (Megan Good and Michael Ealy) who decide to buy their dream home in Napa Valley. Everything seems perfect at first until it becomes clear that the previous owner, Charlie (Dennis Quaid), is having trouble letting go of the house. While he might seem like a harmless old man at first, it’s soon revealed that it’s all an act and Charlie is much more dangerous than anyone could have thought. What ensues is a twisted game as Charlie tries to take back his home by any means necessary.
Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. If the premise of The Intruder seems familiar, that’s because it’s a terrible knock off of the 2003 film Cold Creek Manor, which also starred, Dennis Quaid. This time around he plays the villain and proves to be one of the only saving graces of the movie. I’ve never seen the creepy side of Quaid and I have to admit that it’s pure nightmare fuel. That normally charismatic and boyish grin is absolutely haunting as we watch him struggle with the mask of sanity he tries to shard to keep in place. The things he does with micro-expressions is pure nightmare fuel. I honestly had no idea he had this side to him. Sure, I might have been rooting for the good guys to survive and junk, but the only time I truly enjoyed it was when he was on screen. The problem is that The Intruder falls far short of Cold Creek Manor.
One of the big reasons I disliked The Intruder is because it’s from director Deon Taylor, who gave us 2018’s Traffik (one of the worst movies from that year). Without going into Traffik too deeply I can say that it feels like he manages to repeat a lot of the same mistakes this time around. Part of the film’s premise is that Charlie is obsessed with his home, Fox Clover. The thing is that we never actually get a good look at the house. Sure, it’s present but it’s simply a prop rather than a setting. Most of the cinematography feels claustrophobic in an attempt to build suspense, but this is counterintuitive to the supposedly grand setting the film takes place in. Taylor doesn’t take the time to explore the layout or really invest in bringing the old home alive. Instead, he’s much too focused on making his characters hip and sexy. Instead of shower scenes featuring Meagan Good (which I’m sure some audiences won’t complain about), he could have taken some time to really show why Charlie is so obsessed with this old home.
Speaking of Meagan Good, she along with Dennis Quaid are the two saving graces of the film. I was excited to see Good on screen again after her cameo Shazam! simply because she won me over in the few minutes she had on screen. This time around, her character isn’t quite as fun, but it’s hard not to like her. Of course, she’s mostly used for eye candy for a lot of the film, but I enjoyed it because her kindness seemed so genuine. It’s because of this that even despite her character’s poor choices, I found myself hoping that nothing bad would happen to her. Unfortunately, even the cat and mouse game between her and Quaid is handled so haphazardly that it’s a shadow of what it could have been.
The Intruder is nothing but a cheap knock off of a film that wasn’t that great to begin with. Despite some pretty decent acting from a few of the leads, it never manages to build any real suspense when they’re in danger. This is mostly because The Intruder feels like it’s a superficial film. It never takes the time to look beneath the surface and give the characters the depth they need in order to connect to the audience. More importantly, it’s a waste of beautiful setting that could have made the film all the more ominous if given the proper treatment. The end result is a movie that I didn’t exactly hate, but failed to leave any sort of lasting impression
