"The Intruder" Review: Stellar Suspense, Dumb Decisions
Certain movies ask for you to just go with it in order for you to take the full ride. The Intruder is one of those types of films. If the lead characters did what we’d do in real life, the movie would be over in thirty minutes. So if you can check your brain at the door and go with it, this film may be the popcorn suspense thriller for your outing this weekend!
Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie Russell (Meagan Good) are a young, successful couple living in San Fransisco looking to start a family. How does Annie want to do that? By buying a house in Napa! They find a beautiful property with lots of character that’s been in one family for generations. The current owner, Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid), greets the couple by shooting a deer right in front of them the first time they visit the property. If that initial encounter isn’t “Get Out” enough for them, throughout the showing, Charlie has a way of stressing the “must keep” features of the house.
After purchasing the property, Charlie finds ways to keep showing up at Scott and Annie’s new home. He mows the lawn and cites that “it was getting out of hand”. It probably doesn’t help that Annie keeps inviting him to functions, like Thanksgiving, even though Charlie is supposed to have moved to Florida to be near his daughter. The Russell’s friends Mike (Joseph Sikora) and Rachel (Alvina August) have mixed views on Charlie. Mike doesn’t trust him and thinks he’s a peeping Tom, while Rachel thinks he’s a hot old man. Regardless, a seed of suspicion is planted and grows into full blown awareness as the film moves forward.
The trinity of actors in this film do a great job of playing their roles. Good plays the loving wife with a heart for the poor old man who lost his wife in their home. Her character is authentic and, while naive, earnest in her decisions. Ealy is the out of his element husband in his new country home digs who also shouldn’t be slept on just because he wears glasses and nice clothes. Quaid has the most fun as the possessive, rehearsed, good ‘ol country boy. In fact, Quaid is repulsive in this movie at some points. Once the sicko is unmasked, he goes all in with his character and it raises the stakes in the hair-raising, skin crawling, “get away from me old man” delivery.
As his follow up to 2018’s Traffik, director Deon Taylor is proving one thing, he understands how to build suspense and tension in a scene. In fact, that’s the biggest thing that this film has going for it. There are a lot of illogical plot contrivances that writer David Loughery has placed in the film. However, Taylor understands what’s creepy, what’s scary based in reality, and uses the camera, lighting and sound to highlight it.
While the use of tension and suspense is fantastic in parts, it doesn’t make up for the whole of the film. There is a point in which an audience starts to yell at the screen in a film like this that’s fun, but there’s also a point in which the film becomes a comedy when it wasn’t written for that. The Intruder looks at that tipping point and walks over the edge. Had it been grounded in more realistic decisions it could be a film that you remember past next week. That said, the ending produced one of the most joyously, uproarious screams of satisfaction I’ve heard in a while.
Rating: C
"Us" Review: Be Prepared for Nightmares
A little over two years ago, Jordan Peele told us to Get Out. This time he wants us to look at ourselves in his new movie Us. While this film doesn’t rise to the masterpiece heights of its predecessor, it sure proves that Peele understands cinema and he’s no one hit wonder. Usually I’d say the hype is real, but the truth is true this time around, and Us is the sci-fi/horror truth!
As a young girl, Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) wandered off from her parents at the Santa Cruz beach. The experience left her speechless and in therapy for years. So years later, when her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) decides that her and the kids should go to the same beach for vacation, she begrudgingly goes. They meet up with the Tyler family and Adelaide learns Kitty’s (Elizabeth Moss) secret to dealing with life is booze, while Gabe and Josh (Tim Heidecker) compare boat sizes.
Once they finally get home and Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) are tucked in, the lights go out and things get weird. A family stands at the edge of the drive way and won’t budge off the property. Once the Wilson family realizes the family is comprised of themselves (called the tethered), a story only Jordan Peele could unveil begins.
Peele hits every note of suspense in setting up scenes that we as an audience are frightened by and using every element of cinema to capitalize on that fear in a way in which you feel like you are in the situation. He uses sound and the lack thereof to build those fight or flight moments that we experience in real life. He’s not afraid to let a moment breathe and build the tension in a scene like some directors in the genre back away from these days. His blocking of characters shows an understanding of a frame of film and how to use it. In a scene with Adelaide riding shotgun in the foreground on the way to the beach with a look of absolute nervousness and Gabe in the background obliviously happy, he allows the story to be told without a useless back and forth of camera shots.
Lupita Nyong’o gives a stellar performance as both Adelaide and her tethered, Red. She plays a range of emotions as both characters and is stellar at it. Red’s presence is almost good enough to put her in the top lists of movie villains. The rest of the cast equally play their parts well in such a way that once the story comes together, you’ll have tons to talk about in the parking lot.
You better believe I’m talking around this film so you can go in as blank as possible. Us does have some story issues, but the setup and storytelling more than make up for those issues. See this film with as many black people as possible! It will only enhance your experience because this is definitely a film you may find yourself talking to the screen in throughout its second and third acts. If you don’t know how to do it, sit back and take notes because it might get hilarious in all the right ways. The best part is, the main characters don’t constantly make silly decisions. It’s old fashion horror and sci-fi with all the good twists and turns it seems we will come to expect from a Jordan Peele movie. With this film, it seems we’re on the verge of seeing a new auteur in the suspense thriller genre.
Rating: B+
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"Annihilation" Review: Subverting The Norm For The Win!
It’s been a while since I’ve watched a sci-fi thriller that used silence in such a way that I could hear the leather of my neighbor’s seat when they moved. Annihilation is one of those film’s that reminds us of what a big budget Hollywood machine can do if given the opportunity. It takes us to perhaps one of the scariest places, our own imagination, and asks us to probe the unknown along with its protagonists.
Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biologist and Army veteran whose husband just returned home after twelve months of radio silence. Army sergeant Kane (Oscar Isaac) was thought to be dead, but his presence brings up more questions than a joyful reunion. Lena finds out that he went on a mission inside what’s called the shimmer. It’s a growing bubble that looks and glistens just like the stuff we used to play with as kids but is far from something to be toyed with. All we know is that things go in, but don’t make it out.
With Kane deathly sick, Lena decides to join the next ragtag group of people going into the mysterious shimmer that only her husband has come back out of. She joins psychologist leading the team, Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Anya (Gina Rodriguez), a paramedic from Chicago, Sheppard (Tuva Novotny), an anthropologist, and Josie (Tessa Thompson), a physicist. The film unfolds over various points in time. It’s told in present day with Lena being investigated by a man in a hazmat suit, so we know one part of how the story ends, but through flashback, we’re able to fill in the gaps.
Director Alex Garland (Ex Machina) is in full control of his film as he cleverly parses out information at just the right pace. He allows us the film to push forward by constantly dangling a question before us. Whether it is what’s the shimmer? How has time passed within it? How has a shark and crocodile crossbred? Or something as simple as what’s that noise? We constantly question what’s happening on screen right along with the group of women who are trying to get the same answers.
As the group slowly begins to unravel and questions themselves and each other, we too are pushed to stretch our minds as to what’s possible within the shimmer. The casting in this film is exquisite as each woman is playing a character that goes against type for what we’ve come to see them in. Sheppard says at one point in the film “we all are damaged”. The way that Portman, Leigh, Rodriguez, Novotny, and Thompson display that on the screen through nuanced performances is a joy to watch. Tessa Thompson certainly stands out as the shy physicist with her physicality and ability to make her character seem so small in compared to the larger than life personas we’ve seen her take on in past works.
Garland’s imagery of this world is beautiful. Yet, he drops clues to what the world is through mise-en-scene (things specifically placed before the camera) by shooting through a glass of water, or plants in the shape of humans. What Garland keeps off screen is equally important as what is on at times and shows his understanding of the power of suspense and mystery in a film like this. In a film like this, the third act is the difference between a downer or a memorable film. Annihilation certainly delivers on a trippy but suspenseful third act that will leave you questioning the future of its world.
While Annihilation may not be on par with Ex Machina, it is a solid addition to the sci-fi/fantasy genre. It’s reminiscent of The Thing in how it constantly makes us and its cast question what we know. The fact that its all women in the lead makes it that much more exciting as they handle the material in a beautiful way that’s subversive of the norms we expect!
Rating: B+