I was filled
with such a sense of déjà vu watching The Intruders that I ended up pausing the
film about halfway through, convinced that there was another recently released
horror film that had nearly the same screenplay. Even if first-time
screenwriter Jason Juravic did not plagiarize the content of this poorly made
horror film from another poorly made horror movie, it contains more cliché
genre tropes than any of the Scary Movie
or Haunted House spoofs with a deadly
seriousness that quickly becomes dull. There is a family with a troubled past
moving into a notorious new home, ambiguous warnings from the neighbors that
conveniently give out no details of the house’s history, and a protagonist with
a history of mental instability so that nobody believes her. My imagination has
more surprises than this horrendously uninspired horror film.
Family
entertainment star Miranda Cosgrove gives an uninspired ‘adult’ performance in
this hodgepodge of horror rip-offs that mixes a variety of overused twists.
Having been forced to take a break from college after having something of a
mental break, Rose moves into a musty old house with her father (Donal Logue).
The first red herring of the film is a plot stolen from Rear Window (or a female Disturbia,
for the younger audience), with Rose convinced that her neighbor (Tom Sizemore)
has killed his own daughter. What is truly frustrating is how irrelevant this
is to what the film is actually about.
Once we get past
the paranoia about the neighbors, it is clear that this sequence was only
inserted to invalidate Rose’s sanity for the film’s real horror. There are
strange things occurring in their new home, which at first seem to be of a
supernatural nature. Rose is determined to find out what happened to the girl
who lived in the house before her, though her curiosity only makes her seem
even more obsessively paranoid to her father and those around her. This leads
to the most over-used trope in the horror genre; a protagonist whose sanity is
questioned. Regardless of the danger that Rose believes she is in, we are
forced to endure endless sequences of other characters attempting to convince
her that she is mentally unstable. This all leads up to a silly and contrived
climax that is more unexplained and unbelievable than the reasons this
screenplay was made in the first place.
The offensively
asinine Canadian-produced feature has a few stars that go completely wasted,
and an averagely competent visual style that gets dragged down by a screenplay
that seems meant for 14-year-old girls only. What is really remarkable to me is
the fact that there are two featurettes in the special features. I cant imagine
anyone involved actually thinks that this is a good movie, but they sure do a
good job faking confidence in these generic extras.
Entertainment Value:
1.5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 1/10
Historical
Significance: 0/10
Special Features: 3/10
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