The Intruder aims for “pulpy delight” and ends up in “trashy mess.”
The biggest issue with The Intruder is the fact that no two people involved in the film seem to have a firm idea of what exactly they are working on. This is no surprise. Director Deon Taylor doesn’t seem entirely sure what exactly the film is from one scene to another. The Intruder is formally a fairly standard horror movie, a home invasion thriller anchored in social anxieties. It is part of a rich vein of cinematic horror that can trace its development through films like Pacific Heights. It is that classic nightmare of a house guest who just won’t leave.
Fatal A-tractor.
The issue is that The Intruder tries to inflect that standard genre set-up with contemporary anxieties about race, gender and class divisions in contemporary America. The Intruder is the story of a wealthy black family that moves from the city into a spacious rural home, displacing the red-blooded middle-aged white guy who has lived in that house for his entire life. Simmering resentments bubble beneath the surface, with an escalating sense of threat and uncertainty as the conflict between these two sides (and these two perspectives) builds to a head.
The biggest problem with The Intruder is that it has no idea what to do with any of these elements, and no idea how to integrate them into a convincing or engaging horror film. Instead, the movie becomes a tonal car crash, packed full of strange choices that never add up to anything especially compelling or exciting. The Intruder pitches itself as a biting social commentary in one scene, a goofy self-aware horror spoof in another, a clumsy domestic drama in another. None of these elements fit together, creating a movie that feels less comfortable in its own surroundings than any of the protagonists.
Dennis the Menace.
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Leave a comment »
