The Intruder, directed by Deon Taylor (Traffik, Meet the Blacks), is chock full of laughs but not the good kind. It's corny and manages to juggle sexist themes and mindless violence with seemingly no end in sight. As a thriller, the film ultimately fails to do its one and only job: which is to paralyze the audience with one of its deepest fears, the terrorizing of your home and family. The story follows Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie (Meagan Good), a beautiful and rich newlywed couple with their eyes on the future and all the possibilities it holds. That is until they meet Charlie (Dennis Quaid).
Charlie sells the pair his magnificent country home, but strangely, he can't seem to stay away from the property for longer than a night. He mows the lawn, does maintenance and constantly insists on showing them where to find things and how to manage the property. The Intruder never really articulates why or how Charlie got this way, and herein lies the film's most egregious problem: its characterization falls to the wayside for narrow jump "scares." This film might be somewhat tolerable if it was actually scary but even those moments are monotonous and downright laughable.
The film's insistence on making Scott's stale, weak character the "hero" of the film falls completely flat. He buys the country house, only to throw this fact in his wife's face that he's the one who bought it. He wants to protect her but fails to be there when she needs his protection. Essentially, we are expected to root for Scott but he does not deserve the praise.
His wife Annie professes to be a writer, but we never see her write the entire film. Instead, she cooks like a 3-star Michelin chef and drinks wine with creepy old men during any time of the day. She also constantly takes long baths and showers which serves no real purpose except to show her naked body and draw the attention of the male gaze.
Likewise, Charlie's character is full of contradictions. He's supposedly fixated with the house in a way that borders on obsessive compulsive disorder. Yet, he has no qualms about trashing the whole place in the pursuit of his new obsession: Annie. This transference suggests that Annie is just another object to be obtained because they don't hammer down any other psychology or motivation behind Charlie's behavior. The bizarre storyline with Charlie's daughter is a meaningless tangent. Quaid's performance is periodically maniacal, almost like a version of The Joker. Unfortunately, Charlie and the other characters are hampered frequently by cheesy dialogue.
A story with a focus on an intruder entering the home is one that will always capture the imagination of an audience with fear. Other films, such as The Invitation (Karyn Kusama), used this concept so well by just having a baseline eerie mood of "something's not right here." Furthermore, films such as Get Out and Us, took the intruder fear to the Nth degree with original twists and impactful commentaries.
Unfortunately, The Intruder failed in more ways than just mood and originality. The editing and music soundtrack of the film were abysmal with jarring pop and R&B songs punctuated throughout the ludicrous storyline in a way as to amplify its ridiculousness. Meanwhile, the fast cuts of the film, such as the shots of Scott running down the road in slow motion, then in real time, then back to slow motion, and the shots of Annie running through the hospital in slow motion are almost unbearable to watch.
The Intruder is regrettably not a great film, given its dull qualities from top to bottom though there is some comfort in knowing that it will no doubt join the graveyard of D-list thrillers no one talks about even a year from now.