Mark Reviews Movies: THE INTRUDER (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 3, 2019

A thriller like The Intruder needs a good villain. Barring that, it needs a menacing performance from the actor playing that role. With neither of those things, it at least needs an actor who tries to do something noteworthy or memorable with the character. With its predictable follow-through and blandly negligent protagonists, this movie really forces us to look at the villain, who is pretty standard-issue and definitely isn't menacing. I guess that only leaves the possibility of the third option.

Dennis Quaid plays the antagonist in this tale of new homeowners who keep getting random, unwelcome visits from Quaid's Charlie Peck, the house's previous owner. His performance is fascinating to watch, if only because he overcompensates for how dull and predictable the character actually is.

Charlie's fake smile fills the whole of his face. His every word and gesture seem overly rehearsed. There's a scene late in the movie in which we watch Charlie practice that smile. Holding a handheld mirror, he first checks his teeth, as if their placement in his mouth may have changed and, therefore, the muscles he needs to use to create the illusion of pleasantness would have to be adjusted.

It's impossible to buy this character as an actual human being, given that he's essentially evil and his only motivation to keep the house that has been in his family for multiple generations. That's what makes Quaid's work here so intriguing. He isn't playing Charlie as a wicked, obsessive man, capable of violence and even murder if anyone gets in his way. No, the actor plays Charlie as an actor himself—and a bad one at that. He tries his damnedest to cover up his real feelings and intentions, but maybe the ruse would be more effective if he had stopped at trying his darnedest instead.

This likely raises more problems within the narrative than Quaid's performance is worth, but then again, that assumes there isn't a slew of other problems with the plot or the other characters. There is, and well, at least we get a truly strange and over-the-top, yet still oddly sound, performance out of the deal. That's something.

The new homeowners are Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie Russell (Meagan Good), a married couple from San Francisco who want to move to the countryside outside of Napa to start a family. Charlie sells the house and its wide estate to the couple, saying that he'll be retiring in Florida to be closer to his daughter. Sometime later, though, Charlie is on the lawn on a riding mower.

The not-too-secret realization is that Charlie has no plans to move anytime soon. In fact, he ends up making a few more uninvited visits to the house—by day and, while standing hidden among the trees on the property, at night.

Scott thinks the daytime visits are odd (He conveniently never sees Charlie at night, even when lights are shining directly on him). Annie, kind soul that she is, thinks poor Charlie is just sad and lonely, since his wife died two years prior after developing cancer. The wording of that detail is important, especially when, months later, Scott finally meets a neighbor who shares a rumor about Mrs. Peck's demise.

We know better than either of the main characters, of course—and not simply because the premise is obvious and director Deon Taylor starts up with the fake-out scares almost as soon as the two move into the house. Yes, Quaid's performance is problematic in terms of establishing tension, because Charlie's manner is so clearly unnatural and rigidly a sham. There's never any doubt that the man has other intentions in his visits, which become planned to evade Scott's suspicious eyes and then creepy in trying to be alone with Annie. If Charlie seems more than a little off when he's just bringing by a bottle of wine, just imagine the look on his face when he's spying on Annie in the shower. Now, just widen the smile on his face by two more inches, and you have an idea of how unrestrained Quaid's performance is here.

At least, though, that element of the movie is entertaining in some way. The rest of plot depends upon Annie being far too naïve (and being placed in discomforting peril involving sexual violence in the third act) and Scott just ignoring the obvious problem until it gets way beyond control. In between the lines of The Intruder is a much smarter story, in which Charlie's character is a man whose false perception of being forgotten and betrayed by the world results in terrible fear and anger. Instead, we get a story that could have been quickly resolved if the new homeowners had just looked in the shed.

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