"Intrusion" nothing to write home about

Intrusion (2021)

Since “Intruder,” “Intruders,” “The Intruder,” and “The Intruders” were already taken, we now have “Intrusion,” a domestic thriller so derivative that it manages to feel like other, better thrillers even outside the home-invasion sub-genre. It’s certainly watchable, particularly as director Adam Salky (2015’s “I Smile Back”) and writer Chris Sparling (2020’s “Greenland”) do start off on the right foot with an involving setup and two more-than-capable actors. Unfortunately, before the film actually gets to its whopper reveals, waiting for the other shoe to drop becomes more frustrating than suspenseful.

Henry (Logan Marshall-Green) and his wife Meera (Freida Pinto) have left Boston to live in Corrales, New Mexico. He’s an architect who has designed and built them a remote contemporary-styled home, and she’s a breast cancer survivor working as a youth therapist. Just as the couple is planning an upcoming housewarming party two months into moving in, it doesn’t take long for a break-in to happen while they’re out on a date. All that was stolen are their cell phones and a laptop, both of which Henry quickly replaces. The next night, the same intruders break in while Henry and Meera are sleeping, but Henry ends up shooting all of them (with a hidden gun she didn’t know they had), leaving one hospitalized. Meera is understandably traumatized, but what else isn’t Henry telling his own wife? Is there a much larger mystery here connected to a missing young woman? 

What initially seems like it’s heading towards being Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs” or David Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence,” “Intrusion” soon deflates as a more run-of-the-mill mystery. For a film hinging on significant others with secrets, the script is largely unimaginative in that it wraps up everything Meera needs to know with some helpful exposition on a camcorder. Freida Pinto solidly makes Meera a vulnerable young woman who still has a backbone, but once the Nancy Drew investigations happen, the actress is sometimes directed to look like a fool (more so than most movie damsels in distress). Logan Marshall-Green has the slightly bigger challenge as Henry, walking the line between a loving, intellectual husband who would do anything to protect his wife and a potential creep. Aside from one comical forced smile slowly morphing into a dead stare, he is mostly chilling. Director Adam Salky’s film looks slick enough, but there’s little style until the plot escalates, with cinematographer Eric Lin’s swirling camera movements and Alex Heffes’ buzzing electronic score. Nothing to write home about, “Intrusion” only rewards viewers for being smart because the discoveries are so obvious. 

Grade: C 

Netflix is releasing “Intrusion” (92 min.) to stream on September 22, 2021.