The word Intruders can mean a lot of things, it’s a nice title for a film that gets a lot more ambiguous than it’s standard horror vibe may put out. Here ‘intruders’ on the surface level refers to a faceless marauding monster that terrorizes two children at night by showing up in their bedrooms, but curiously they are in completely different regions, one a girl (Ella Purnell) in London and the other a boy (Izán Corchero) somewhere far away in Spain. What is this evil cloaked figure, where does it come from, why does it only torment these poor kids and what’s the connection between them? These are questions with answers that lie like dark secrets within this shadowy, challenging narrative and I was pleased to note that this is anything but a routine monster/ghost story and has some disturbing, sad revelations that are hard to see coming. The boy in Spain wrestles with this demon as his mother (Pilar Lopez De Alaya) confers with a concerned local priest (Daniel Bruhl) about the situation. Over in London the young girl’s mother (Carice Van Houten) and father (Clive Owen) grow increasingly hopeless and desperate as this thing won’t stop showing up in their daughter’s bedroom and her mental state gets worse and worse. In this case the word ‘Intruders’ sort of means memories more than anything else, decades old trauma passed from one generation to the next until it’s somehow resolved and the monsters can be put to rest. I like the two different locations, bustling metropolitan London and creaky, eerie rural Spain juxtapose nicely while the multinational, eclectic cast are all fantastic with Owen a standout in the film’s key role. It’s a great script with some truly unsettling fright sequences, a twist ending that I dare you to guess even a few minutes ahead of time and some emotional catharsis in the third act that hits home, hard. Highly recommended.
-Nate Hill
Podcasting Them Softly 