“Clive Owen... what happened?”
Intruders is a horror film with no discernible scares, dumb characters and a rancid script. Despite the fact that I watch movies for a living I never – NEVER – am the guy who can predict a story twist. And yet I saw the (alleged) surprise a mile away. I guess director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and writers Nicolas Casariego and Jaime Marques think that most people will never realize that “Juan” is “John” in Spanish. I mean, come on – who speaks Spanish?
This boogeyman is a cloaked, blankly-visaged figure called “Hollowface.” He is summoned to our British suburb because the daughter reads a child's story hidden in a tree, written by a Spanish kid tormented by the same figure.
Now, I'm no writing prof, and far be it from me to critique a small child's scribblings, particularly when they are suffering the mental anguish of paranormal intimidation – but this kid's prose is just awful. He starts every sentence with the same word. And that word is “Hollowface.” As in “Hollowface lurks in dark corners,” and “Hollowface will steal the face right off of your head.” Seriously, you can make a drinking game with this movie, doing a shot every time someone says the word “face.” Most risible is when the endless descriptions of Hollowface reach their logical conclusion, “Hollowface didn't even have a face!” This howler is spoken a minimum of three times.
Thank God for that, though, because this bit of foolishness is the only thing that makes this film even slightly memorable. The special effects look cheap and even the creepy Spanish church fails to impress. When the big weepy father-daughter drama at the end started up (bawling in a rain-soaked fantasy underworld, if memory serves) the audience at my screening couldn't contain their laughter.
I'm sure Clive Owen still has some A-List material in him, but shame on him for making this film. He had to have read the script before agreeing and I'm sure it was just as dumb in print as it is on screen.
