Mark Reviews Movies: INTRUSION

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 22, 2021

One thought persists as Intrusion unfolds: Can we just get to the point, already? Chris Sparling's screenplay is such an obvious game of deflection and delaying that, if the movie's big revelation weren't the only possibility that exists, all of the misdirection would inevitably point us in the correct direction.

The story revolves around married couple Meera (Freida Pinto) and Henry (Logan Marshall-Green), as well as the house that he, an architect, built for them outside a small town in the middle of the desert. When the two return from dinner one night, they discover that someone broke into their home but didn't steal anything except their cellphones and a laptop. Henry installs a security systems, buys new phones with a tracker on them, and tries to let life go back to normal.

It doesn't, of course. The burglars return, but thankfully, this doesn't become some routine home-invasion thriller. Henry, who has a pistol Meera was unaware of, kills two of the invaders and severely wounds the third. A local police detective (played by Robert John Burke) informs the couple that the men were connected to a woman who disappeared, and that's about where the plot details should end.

In broad terms, the rest of the story has Meera looking into the men, the missing woman, and all sorts of clues that point her to only one likely result. She ignores or denies it, for reasons that don't really matter to Sparling or director Adam Salky (A subplot involving a cancer scare leads to some clunky, exposition-heavy dialogue and a pretty laughable moment of attempted suspense based on miscommunication).

The filmmakers are too busy doling out hints, setting up predictable payoffs (Meera buys something online that we know is the key to the mystery—and also know will conveniently show up until the third act), and playing unconvincing cat-and-mouse games with technology, while indulging in a battle of wits between characters who have none to spare. Pinto and Marshall-Green do what they can with these dull and dense characters, but they're little more than pawns in this drawn-out, predictable game.

The answer to the mystery of Intrusion is obvious. With all of the roundabout clues and lengthy scenes of investigation (At least a minute is devoted to a character staring at blueprints), maybe the filmmakers are trying to bore us into missing the answer.

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