The Intruder (2019)

Directed by: Deon Taylor | 97 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: Meagan Good, Michael Ealy, Dennis Quaid, Joseph Sikora, Alvina August, Erica Cerra, Kurt Evans, Carolyn Anderson, Lili Sepe, Raylene Harewood, Chris Shields, Sam Vincent, Caroline Muthoni Muita, Connor Mackay

Just imagine: a young couple friends with you buy a house privately on the edge of a forest and are very happy with it. Because they want children, the apartment in the big city no longer suited their plans for the future. Of course you’re happy for them, although you don’t envy them because of the amount of DIY work that awaits them. But then you hear that the previous owner of the house, a widower, is acting rather strange. He often comes by unexpectedly and once he even took the lawnmower out of the (closed!) shed and started mowing the lawn on his own. When you hear that he seems both obsessed with the new female owner and that his wife died in the house under suspicious circumstances, then all alarm bells go off, right?

What is it about movies that blurs our boundaries? If friends of the above situation really happened to you, of course with the sequel that is not revealed in this review due to spoilers, then this would be the topic of conversation at your home for weeks. But now that it is a film and you know that this is not real, your boundary with what is ‘normal’ seems to dissolve. When you watch it, you will label ‘The Intruder’ as a thriller-light. Entertaining, but never really gruesome or nail-bitingly exciting.

Meagan Good and Michael Ealy play Annie and Scott, the couple with a desire to have children who want to move to Napa, California. Annie, in particular, is instantly in love with Foxglove. Foxglove, yes, the house is named after the poisonous foxglove. That looks like a hint to ominous things, but otherwise not that much is done with it. Dennis Quaid plays the widower, who has to admit with regret that the house is too big for him, now that his wife has died and his children have left the house. Because he likes Annie and Scott, he deducts something from the exorbitant price and they get to take over all his furniture. However, he keeps postponing his departure to Florida to live with his daughter and at the most unfavorable moments he is at the door again. Always with a good excuse and much of his advice is well-intentioned, but it especially gives Scott the creeps.

Of course everyone can feel in their clogs where this all leads. Dennis Quaid plays the part as a madman with verve and is really creepy at times. In one scene he goes completely wild as Jack ‘The Shining’ Torrance (whether that fragment is a homage or a shameless copy is not clear). It’s a shame that Annie and Scott don’t manage to get above their paper characters. They do what is expected of the screenplay, but don’t really come to life as characters. For example, Annie is a writer for women’s magazines, women empowerment and all that, but we never see her at work. She is an expert in the kitchen and other household chores. Her naivety rubs uncomfortably against the annoying. Scott has the usual job at an advertising agency and easily brings in the biggest clients, but we don’t really get to know him.

‘The Intruder’ feels like a movie that you’ve seen countless times before (especially if you’re reasonably up to date with the same genre from the nineties), but this thriller is still good. Thanks in part to Quaid’s enthusiastic play, the fast pace and the pleasant feeling that good will win over evil, because not for a moment does this film give you the idea that Annie and Scott will never fulfill their wish to have children.