The Intruder

Moving into a new neighborhood presents various story opportunities in various media in many genres. Whether it's meeting that neighbor that can turn into a love interest or an enemy to being antagonized by new threats ranging from either the former owner to homicidal thugs. Some of these scenarios can be played for laughs such as in Neighbors where a married couple comes into conflict with a fraternity that moves next-door to them or for some suspense. This brings us to a film was supposed to be the latter with The Intruder, which was directed by Deon Taylor (Traffik, Meet the Blacks) and written by David Loughery (Penthouse North, Obsessed). I wasn't really aware of this feature until I heard about it a few weeks ago from a few reviewers. I felt that I needed to get back to basic stories after the craziness of Avengers: Endgame and before the rest of the summer blockbusters arrived. I entered the auditorium ready to see if I can get some entertainment value out of it and left it having had one of my favorite audience viewing experiences in a theater for a hilariously bad movie.

What's it about? The story follows a couple who buys a house but the previous owner has evil intentions for them and creeps around them a lot. Now on paper that's a premise with the potential to make the suspense chilling or intimidating to watch. However, the end result is a weird mess to observe with some of the worst dialog and writing choices from this year so far. Instead of making this couple relatable or interesting, they are made to be inconsistent, being very gullible to the point of being laughable, and have the habit of bringing up exposition facts about themselves that never come or even matter (such as the husbands history of cheating on the wife and his evasion of guns that's ignored in the ending). The repetition of the narrative structure hurts the quality as well since it follows the predictable pattern that gets tedious very quickly (previous owner drops by the house unexpectedly, wife thinks that he's a nice guy they should invite to their events as he doesn't have nearby family, husband is suspicious, repeat). It also doesn't help that the goals of the creepy previous owner are inconsistent in the second half.

How's Dennis Quaid? The best part of the entire film is Dennis Quaid's great performance as the antagonist. While everyone in the film is directed to be serious, he's having the most amount of fun in this role to where it makes everything unintentionally funny. This can range from where he's just standing in the distance attempting to be scary, the camera is close to his smiling faces, and how he talks using the script he's dealing with. His interactions with the couple almost killed me and the audience with laughter through all of the actors antics. He was the main source of entertainment found in this sloppy film and kept things going until the bitter end.

How's everyone else? As for the main actors portraying the couple, Michael Ealy and Meagan Good, it feels like both of them are in "autopilot" mode with their respective roles here due to the direction given to them. The former is struggling with the limited script that restricts him to being husband that could have fleshed out more with his background. Instead he's caught between throwaway lines about previous problems with the marriage and his phobia with guns (that the films forgets about in the resolution). The latter is dealt the worst hand by not only being incredibly gullible about the danger at hand but is treated like a sex object (there are 2 times in the films where for a minute or two, it turns into a sex scene). A dishonorable mention goes to Mikey (Joseph Sikora) for giving the worst performance here where his screen presence is just awkward to look at.

Overall Consensus: The Intruder is an awkward suspense movie that's muddled with a weak predictable script, lackluster direction, and terrible dialog but benefits from Dennis Quaid's great over the top performance. ⭑3/4💻 Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes PG-13

Reasons to watch it: You like any of the aforementioned actors. You enjoy films that are so bad their unintentionally humorous. You are interested in Dennis Quaid's over the top acting.

Reasons to avoid it: You dislike any of the aforementioned actors. You hate stories that are both sloppily written and predictably bland.