Lock the doors, stay home: Rashid Irani reviews The Intruder
A couple moves into a sprawling estate, only to have the previous owner turn up at odd hours, behaving more and more strangely. It’s a plot that’s been done before, more than once, and better.
Dennis Quaid plays a gun-toting sociopath who terrorises a young Black couple after they have bought and moved into his sprawling former estate in the heart of California’s wine country. His manic intensity is more or less the only thing that will hold your attention in this ineffectual home-invasion ‘thriller’.
The couple in question (Meagan Good-Michael Ealy) has moved from San Francisco to this remote manor in Napa Valley in order to start a family. They hadn’t, of course, reckoned with the motivations of the seller, who was supposed to move to Florida to live with his daughter but instead keeps showing up unannounced, especially when the wife is alone.
If all this sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s been done before, and done far better, in films such as Pacific Heights and Unlawful Entry.
This script is mired in clichés and absurdities, including a subplot about the husband’s past infidelities and current flirtations that goes nowhere. Why does the couple not simply call the cops? Who knows.
Avoid The Intruder; it’s a waste of time.
