INTRUSION : Monday 27th September 2021.

With Greater Sydney still in COVID lockdown now until the 11th October at least, and as a result all cinema's closed until sometime after this date, I've been reviewing recently some the latest feature films released onto Netflix. One such film that I watched from the comfort of my own sofa at home this week is the American psychological thriller 'INTRUSION' which landed on Netflix on 22nd September. This film is Directed by Adam Salky who has nineteen Directorial credits to his name, although this is only his third feature film outing following 'Dare' in 2009 with Alan Cumming and Rooney Mara and 'I Smile Back' with Sarah Silverman in 2015. He has also Directed the documentary 'We Want You' in 2010, the made for TV movie 'The College Admissions Scandal' in 2019 and three episodes of 'Blindspot' amongst a number of short films in the meantime. 'Intrusion' has generated mostly unfavourable Reviews so far. 

The film opens up with a lone woman jogging along a dirt path towards a palatial architecturally designed house sitting literally in the middle of nowhere in very rural Corrales, outside Alburquerque, overlooking the mountains in the background and the dim city lights in the distance. The woman jogging, Meera Parsons (Freida Pinto) arrives home to be greeted by her doting husband Henry Parsons (Logan Marshall-Green). The couple used to live in Boston, where Meera had been diagnosed with cancer, during which time Henry helped nurse his ailing wife back to full health and strength. After designing the house they moved into two months ago, and supervised the construction, Henry and Meera decided to abandon the rat race and move to a small town community where they now happily reside. They decide to go out to a restaurant for dinner that night, and afterwards we see them playing Scrabble over a glass of wine while still sat at their table. They deliberately leave their mobile phones at home, having purposely become less reliant upon them since making the move. 

Upon returning home Henry suggests watching a movie, but it's not long before they discover that their house has been robbed and Henry's office has been turned upside down, amongst a few other areas of their home. The local Detective Steven Morse (Robert John Burke) is on the scene questioning Meera and Henry and learns that only their two mobile phones and Henry's laptop computer had been stolen. Over the next couple of days Henry repairs the damage, puts automatic locks on the doors controlled by their newly purchased mobile phones, instals sensor lights to the outside entry, and puts a tracking app on both phones so that they can both see where the other is at all times. 

A short time after, one night while sleeping Meera wakes and is disturbed by noises. She turns to her bedside clock and it's not working. She goes to turn on her bedside light and that too is not working. She wakes Henry telling him the power is out. Looks like rain must have tripped the circuit he says, but reluctantly he goes outside to check the generator. He sees that the generator has been sabotaged and then notices two torchlight flashes coming from within the house. Racing back, and fearing the worst, he discovers Meera bound and gagged at the foot of their bed. Untying her, they gingerly make their way downstairs and observe two men ransacking his office. Henry motions to Meera to stay put while he retrieves a hidden revolver concealed in a plant pot. Henry is set upon by one of the intruders while Meera makes a dash for it outside and into his car. Sat there fumbling with the keys two shots ring out inside the house. Henry emerges from the house with gun in hand, having shot one intruder inside the house, while the other, with a bullet wound to the stomach, stumbles outside and pleads with Meera for help before being shot dead in the back by Henry. 

The next day the pair are waiting in a local cafe for Detective Morse to arrive. Meera remains badly shaken by the events of the previous night and by her husband seemingly being unaffected. Morse explains that the intruders were Dylan Cobb (Mark Sivertsen) and Colby Cobb (Brandon Fierro), but the one baffling thing about them is that Dylan's daughter Christine (Megan Elisabeth Kelly) has been missing for sometime now. Dylan remains in hospital in intensive care, with his chances of survival being slim. A couple of nights later Henry goes to get supplies for a housewarming party they are throwing but leaves his wallet behind. Meera notices before he has even left the driveway and so calls him but gets his voicemail so she decides to drive after him to give it to him. But Henry doesn't go to the store as he had indicated and instead heads off in the direction of the local hospital. Before she can follow him to his real destination, her car in involved in a road traffic accident with a pick-up truck. Her car is towed to a local auto repair shop, she catches an Uber home by which time Henry is back home too. She explains what happened and asks why Henry veered off towards the hospital, to which he retorts that he wasn't concentrating and took a wrong turn. 

Since Meerra's car is in the shop for repairs, she takes Henry's car to work instead and uses the opportunity to scroll through his GPS listing, with suspicions raised over his recent behaviour and lies. One address is in the same trailer park where Detective Morse confirmed the two home invaders lived. Before she goes there, the Detective reveals that Dylan, who survived Henry's assault died in the hospital on Sunday night, the precise time Henry supposedly went to the store for their housewarming party supplies. Meera heads to the trailer park and while snooping around Dylan's house finds a crumpled letter on the floor from Henry's firm, revealing that the two were connected and that Henry had lied. She then goes to the local postal office and a box which she unlocks with a key found in Dylan's pick-up truck, retrieves a parcel containing a video camcorder. Before she is able to leave she is interrupted by a local guy Clint Oxbow (Clint Obenchain) who comes on strong telling her to stay away and that he saw her car there earlier in the week even though Meera had never been there before. He snatches the package from Meera's hands and slams it against the postal box several times. 

Meera returns home and views the footage on the camcorder of Henry, but the visuals and audio are badly compromised by the beating it took earlier. She searches Henry’s office where she finds a USB chip with pictures of Dylan Cobb working on the construction of their home, but is interrupted by Henrys return. Later that night while Henry sleeps she scrolls thru the USB and see more of the construction staff and Dylan, and also sees Christine, his missing daughter. The next morning she purchases on line a new camcorder of the exact make and model as the one destroyed and has it delivered to her work address. She goes to the Police station to possibly show what’s on the USB drive but is interrupted by a telephone call, and decides not to report her findings. She goes home and confronts Henry with what she has uncovered. He tells her that the Police found Christine's body and that they arrested a guy. He successfully manages to talk his way out of everything and she accepts this. 

A few days later they throw their housewarming party, and all appears to be going swimmingly. She goes into the lounge to tell two guys watching the TV that dessert is about to be served. The news comes on with a local headline that Clint Oxbow had been arrested for mistreating his dogs, showing images of bloodstains by their kennel, but no mention of Christine. This raises Meera's suspicions once again and as by now the new camcorder has been delivered so she secrets herself away temporarily to play the recording. It shows Dylan claiming that Henry has Christine locked up somewhere in the house, and the night of the break-in, to which they took their Alsatian dog, the dog was barking in Henry's office like there was no tomorrow. She goes to the office, and rifles through Henry's architectural drawings of the house and in particular his office. She uncovers a secret panel leading down into a basement, in which tied and bound to a chair is Christine. 

Henry finds them, a scuffle ensues and he ties Meera up, and then ventures back upstairs with a bleeding nose saying he slipped and sends the guests home. By now Meera has chewed through her bindings and untied Christine. A chase ensues, which culminates back down in the basement with Henry standing over Christine now tied again with a baseball bat raised. From behind Meera bashes him on the head with a heavy clock ornament from Boston and he falls back and slumps down on the chair that Christine was previously bound to. His body goes into spasms, and he dies where he sits. Some weeks later and Meera has sold the house and is seen packing the last of her belongings into a removal truck as she then drives off into the sunset. 

'Intrusion' is another domestic thriller potboiler that has become so popular in recent times on Netflix, and bears certain similarities to 'Aftermath' which I reviewed just a few weeks ago. But does that popularity of this home invasion sub-genre make this film any good? The plot here is familiar predictable stuff that many a viewer will I'm sure have deduced how it all pans out within the first fifteen minutes, and how Henry is the real antagonist here long before the gullible Meera has worked out all of his devious machinations. There are also a number of questions left unanswered including how does Clint Oxbow fit into all of this, how come Henry was so non-plussed about the break-in and the subsequent aftermath, and is Henry really dead at the end??? Logan Marshall-Green is the standout performance in this film as the husband harbouring a dark secret, and its clear that there's very little chemistry between him and Freida Pinto despite their deep rooted on-screen love for each other (another red herring here!). Like 'Aftermath' the film warns the audience never to let love cover over the cracks of what a partner is truly capable of and how oftentimes the most dangerous situations can come from within your own home - the place where you should feel the safest!

'Intrusion' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-