Intruders

Intruders

Spain.

2011. In English and Spanish.

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Starring Clive Owen, Izan Corchero, Ella Purnell

Beloved Scarers and Screamers,

            When I’m not watching or writing about horror movies, I’m constantly reading horror literature for maximum inner turmoil. I just recently discovered the Penpal series by Dathan Auerbach (free to read on Reddit, or buy in paperback), in which a young man pieces together a series of uncanny events that terrified him for a decade of his childhood. My satisfaction with the story was well worth the subsequent night I spent sleepless, shuddering under the covers with the light on.

            It was in fact the first such night I’d had in a long time. When I was very young and yet unused to all the dark dementias I now adore, I was often scared to sleep at night, so I enlisted a stuffed dog and bear as my nocturnal vanguard. And nevertheless I continue to find myself drawn to the sick and weird. It’s to be a lifelong journey of inexplicable emotional masochism. The compulsion to seek such scares clearly means something is woefully amiss with my psyche. Oh well, à chacun son truc. :-)

            Intruders concerns two similarly fright-filled children, Mia and José, who become obsessed with writing about the dark being that haunts their bedrooms nightly. How exactly the same specter, Hollow Face, comes to menace these children, one in England, the other in Spain, is a mystery that Intruders takes its time to reveal. And for how long can Hollow Face be written off as a figment of a scared child’s imagination when Mia’s father and José’s mother are attacked as well?

            The film borrows something from J.A. Bayona’s Orfanato (2007), in its emphasis on story over scares. Its haunting, lyric plot is the movie’s biggest strength, winning your emotional involvement early on. The relationship and camaraderie between Mia and her father becomes deeply absorbing and at times alarming, and is another highlight. Intruders is a slick film that is at times unnerving, though never overly grisly. I give it a 3/5 on the Scare-o-meter, and a 1/5 on the Gore-o-meter. Without giving much away, the movie’s denouement is a just and settling conclusion to a masterfully told story. I highly recommend Intruders, although you may just want to dig out your own dog and bear before you watch it tonight.

Peace, love, and screams,

AC