Movies
Intruders
“What begins as a masterfully crafted creature feature ultimately falls flat on its face knocking out all of its teeth…If you’re able to overlook a sh*t finale, and over used CGI, ‘Intruders’ is still a pretty OK film loaded with some freaky imagery and ghostly attack scenes. It’s sort of a psychological fairy tale that may deliver enough punches for a home video audience.”
What begins as a masterfully crafted creature feature ultimately falls flat on its face knocking out all of its teeth.
Directed by 28 Weeks helmer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, the screenplay by Jaime Marques and Nico Casariego attempts something quite unique with Intruders. The film follows two separate stories, one about a boy, Juan (Izán Corchero), who is writing about being haunted by “Hollow Face”, while the other follows a little girl, Mia (Elle Purnell), as she’s also beginning to encounter this Frighteners-esque hooded creature. Juan’s story is already near its end, which interestingly builds tension for the viewer as they watch Mia’s encounters unfold. Things get interesting when both Juan’s mother and Mia’s father (Clive Owen) also see the so-called monster.
The first two acts are quite well done as they build on the mythology and really deliver on scares, although some unnecessarily heavy use of CGI hinders any of it from being believable.
And while most of the film is pretty entertaining, the third act twist is so infuriating that I could have sworn I saw a few theater patrons flick off the screen. The reason is that the filmmaking team breaks one of the cardinal rules of horror: make sure it isn’t “all a dream”. While that isn’t the actual twist, it may, as well, have been. It makes me want to pull out all of my hair simply because the movie is kind of awesome, but the ending pretty much negates anything cool that happens. It’s a shameful twist that unfortunately leaves me no choice but to advise against seeing it.
If you’re able to overlook a sh*t finale, and over used CGI, Intruders is still a pretty OK film loaded with some freaky imagery and ghostly attack scenes. It’s sort of a psychological fairy tale that may deliver enough punches for a home video audience.
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
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