Intrusion Review – Netflix’s Home Invasion Thriller Passes The Course | Detective novels



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THere’s a breadcrumb trail scattered enough throughout the lively Netflix thriller Intrusion that starts us off in a subgenre before taking us to a whole different place. It’s not that either location is particularly original or that the reveal is so revealing (your overall enjoyment will depend on how much déjà vu you’re able to swallow in one sitting), but there’s some simple, low-stakes fun to be had along the way, a passable Friday night pot that will wipe out as soon as the credits roll in.

That seems like just about enough for most who tune into Netflix these days, lazily looking for something dual-screen, and the much-publicized Year of the Original Movie Streamer (one per week! ) Medium-sized TV movies with stars you vaguely know doing things you have vaguely seen before. That’s exactly what we have with Intrusion, as Freida Pinto (you know, from Slumdog Millionaire) and Logan Marshall-Green (you know, from Prometheus) star in a reliable thriller: the handsome heterosexual couple who have the perfect home, jobs, relationship and skin. Meera and Henry have moved to a small town to an extravagant modern house he designed himself, but does their presence disturb the locals? Is that why one night they arrive home to find someone has broken into?

Initially, it’s just a heist but the next time it’s much worse and the couple find themselves fighting for their lives against a group of masked invaders. Henry manages to gain control and shoots them, but then they are faced with murky consequences and a story that doesn’t quite stick.

After 2008, the insidiously powerful home invasion thrillers piled up, a simple, cheap subgenre that appeals to our core fear of not feeling safe in the one place we should feel most. safe. What’s interesting about Intrusion is that the home invasion is just the beginning and writer Chris Sparling (whose genre credits are high – Buried – and especially low – Lakewood, ATM) examines what happens when the parts are then picked up and sifted. The screening of Meera is the most entertaining element in the film, as we play detective with her, rummaging through drawers, using technology, and as the tagline suggests, asking questions she might not want. Answer. Where Meera ends up isn’t a big surprise (I called her in the trailer, then confirmed it in my head in the first 15 minutes, no medal thank you) but it’s a twist that brings the film to an engaging and wicked place, going from thriller to horror with an effectively gnarly finale.

It’s propulsive enough to work in the moment although our investment falters thanks to a vacant central performance of a lethargic Pinto, an actor who often struggles to connect with his equipment and then, in turn, with his audience. . It’s a shame because the character’s quick and grueling descent after losing everything could have allowed another actor to add some emotional weight to an otherwise mechanical story. Marshall-Green is a more confident presence, but there is a glaring lack of chemistry between the pair and so again, we’re kept surface level throughout. Like most of Netflix’s releases, it’s plagued by this all-too-familiar visual platitude (it’s not a movie, it’s a Netflix MovieSo while the house and its occupants possess an otherworldly beauty, the movie surrounding them predictably resembles a pedestrian, with director Adam Salky not straying from the dog-eared Netflix playbook.

For even more content, this is a nice option, with the simple A-to-B-to-C plot getting involved enough that we don’t care exactly what’s going on, but at least see what. it all becomes unpleasant. The sequence of perversity at the center of Intrusion pushes him above the norm, waking us briefly before clicking on something else sleepily.

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