The Intruder

The-Intruder
The Intruder

Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie (Meghan Good) are a married couple, living in San Francisco who relocate to Napa Valley. They take ownership of Charlie Peck’s house, who is played by Dennis Quaid. Though Charlie promises that they can make the necessary adjustments because he is planning to go to Florida, he does not leave and begins to haunt Scott instead. Even if Annie does not consider making those changes to be of any offense Scott does, and soon after Charlie develops a sick obsession which forces these two to see his dark side.

The Intruder, how easily one can lose track of how it was all supposed to have been originally, an engaging film revolves around a slightly disturbed head case cracker who breaks into a house which happens to be his own home but he never gets bored of any other house for even a moment. It’s a simple pleasure to see the confused and the utterly incapable heads get miserable but in a delightful existential kind of a way. Why does no one ever back away and look at this whole tragedy from a little distance chip a bit of humor into it, and just try to act without overstepping their range, at least in such a basic plot killing an entire family? Quite a few places there were such instances where I thought they needed to act much more coherently than they had for whatever game they were playing.

Logan and Ealy completely fail to deliver resounding characters worth rooting for while their characters come off with egregious stupidity and annoyance. They are both okay in terms of performance however, in all fairness, there was nothing much for them to explore anyhow. Scott lacks character and any sort of humor to his character’s depth, and he exists in the plot so that all the viewers can at least agree that Charlie is crazy which makes even more sense when the movie depicts Annie as the dumbest person ever to have stepped into a horror movie.

Honestly, there is a point when she has done so many obviously stupid things that my entire theater audience was so vocal as to nitpick the ignore-the-audience proverbial slapping that came with the facepalm. There is a particular scene for instance, where Scott asks Annie to listen to herself when she says that Charlie is not really that bad, but it’s not possible to take such a stance when the rest of the film is about struggling to maintain some posture of seriousness whilst constantly being a part of comically absurd situations throughout the entire duration of the show.

The one person who seems to actually enjoy himself in The Intruder is Quaid and if this was his audition for the Joker, it would be hard to argue against giving him the role due to the sheer entertainment in his performance. Throughout the film, he tries to deliver each line with perseverance and with a devilishly tone-inducing smile, it slowly begins to appear quite fun. This is obviously a different take from him which is exactly the role he plays in this film and especially during this performance. I will say though, I will always wish that there was some suspense as to whether or not Charlie is as insane as Scott perceives him, but then I realized how irrelevant that would have been. Going in, viewers are pretty aware that Charlie is a psycho and the way he is introduced literally makes everyone wonder what is wrong with him. So, establishing some type of doubt about Charlie would have been a waste and the film was smart enough to know what the audience wanted and made Charlie all the more entertaining to watch.

Honestly, even with all the complaints that can be readily piled up against The Intruder, there’s still a lot of enjoyment to be found. Quaid is astounding and I sure did find myself laughing at Annie’s stupidity. There are even some sequences that enable Quaid to engage in some decent exchanges and manufacture a couple of tense moments, however obvious they seem, still pleasant to watch. It’s a pity that Scott and Annie had a ‘bitter past’ yet it is never explored or made relevant in the least but it does result in some accidental comic relief that I tend to love in one way or another.

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