Intruders

Intruders (2015) is a solid, but flawed indie thriller. I went into this movie with extremely low expectations. I thought it would be terrible. While the movie isn't great, it still exceeded my expectations. The acting was alright, but the slow buildup kept the movie engaging. The pacing was steady, and kept the movie flowing.The plot twist wasn't anything special, but at least is wasn't mindbogglingly stupid, it was tolerable. My big problem with this movie is its repetitiveness. The dialogue repeats itself many times, making it extremely painful at certain points. Still, the direction of this film is adequate, the setting is sufficient, and overall, this is an all right movie. It's nothing remarkable, but it is certainly not terrible.

INTRUDERS first introduces us to Anna (Beth Riesgraf) and her terminally ill brother, Conrad (Timothy McKinney). His death leaves Anna alone in their enormous house, where three criminals (Jack Kesy, Martin Starr, and Joshua Mikel) soon break in. Anna was supposed to be at Conrad's funeral, but she suffers from agoraphobia, resulting in her inability to leave her home.

At first, the thieves are in control, with Anna doing her best to evade capture. However, neither Anna nor her house are what they appear to be, and the situation changes rapidly. The story evolves from a more typical thriller, into something more unexpected, with some big twists added for suspense.

For the most part, Ms. Riesgraf plays her role with subtlety, instead of going the "bug-eyed maniac" route. The home invaders are fairly standard, with one being the "explosive / psychopathic" type, another being the "weak link" type, and the third being more rational and strong. Of course, there's not much in the way of character development, but that's in keeping with the trend in modern cinema.

Not a bad way to spend a movie night...

Just finished watching Intruders or Shut In. I don't know what the real title is and I don't get why you have to have two different titles for one movie. But nevertheless I enjoyed this thriller. It's not a horror movie but a thriller. I didn't read any of the reviews before watching it and I'm glad I didn't because the story is full of twists and I didn't see them coming at all. The actors all did a good job with their respective characters. The story starts slow but quickly builds up to a efficient thriller. There are enough twists in the movie to keep you interested until the end. Even though the end was a bit disappointing to me but it still is a good thriller to watch.

I wasn't too bored watching it, so I guess that's a plus.

But overall I can't say that this was very impressive, we've seen it all before (even though the movie does throw a rather surprising twist at us which by all means is not a new one it's usually just delivered more upfront).

The characters didn't seem very believable to me either, not necessarily bad acting just very 2-dimensionally written characters that didn't feel real, and things that were supposed to be shocking just came across as the opposite.

And it just completely lacks the edge that it clearly was meant to have.

It's not absolutely terrible though but it's kinda like when you are thirsty and you'd really like a cold soda, and instead you get a lukewarm one that's gone flat.

Has had 3 name-changes I know of since it's release: The Lifetime movie sounding 'Deadly Home' the incredibly unoriginal 'Intruders' and the best one: 'Shut In'...

And that's just the ones I know of, it's almost like it decided to change name of it for every bad review it got.

The whole "Woman turns the table of ruthless killers" thing has been done a lot lately. You're Next, Preservation, I Spit On Your Grave Remakes, have all done the theme quite well. So when I read the premise for this film it sounded like more of the same and I really wasn't too thrilled. But "Intruders" managed to take that theme and do something pretty interesting and a little interested with it.

I won't spoil anything but I will say that this isn't just simply a movie about a woman being attacked by men and then turning the tables on them. There are some things thrown in to spice it up a bit and make the movie more suspenseful. However, some of the things that were thrown in felt a little choppy and rushed. It's good that the film makers tried to do some original things but some of them just didn't work.

The movie's weak point is definitely the characters. The baddies are just not interesting at all and the leading female transitions through emotions way too much to ever really gain a connection with the audience. You want to root for her but a lot of her actions are questionable, and plus one minute she will be a ruthless bad ass and then the next she is a babbling victim.

I liked this film, it does enough right to make it an entertaining experience. Unfortunately it misses the ball on being more then just good, if they would have done a few more things right it probably could have been a pretty great horror film.

6/10