Mark Reviews Movies: TRESPASSERS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 11, 2019

Early on, it seems as if Trespassers will follow the usual formula of the home-invasion thriller. We're introduced to a group of masked and murderous men, who have abducted a couple from their home, looking for something. After the man states that what the strangers are looking for is in the house, the men in masks kill their captives. That's when a group of four friends arrive at the now-dead couple's house, having rented it for the weekend. Whatever could happen next?

It's not quite what one expects, although Corey Deshon's screenplay does get to that point eventually. The narrative beats between the setup of the premise and when the movie finally gets to the home invaders are both intriguing and frustrating. The plot in between is intriguing because it suggests the real threat isn't from an anonymous group of outsiders. It's frustrating because, despite the expectation-defying build-up to the story's climax, we can sense Deshon simply biding his time before meeting the audience's expectations.

The four friends are a mostly unsympathetic bunch. The married Sarah (Angela Trimbur) and Joseph (Zach Avery) recently have suffered a loss. Estelle (Janel Parrish) is Sarah's friend since high school, and she's dating Victor (Jonathan Howard), an all-around a-hole. We soon learn that Joseph and Estelle had a recent fling—information they want to keep secret, because Sarah is mourning and Victor is prone to violence.

Then a visitor (played by Fairuza Balk, in an impressively enigmatic performance) knocks on the door, looking to use the phone. To one degree or another, everyone freaks out in a way that makes us suspect they know they're in a thriller.

Our protagonists end up behaving in strange and erratic ways. If that were the point of this tale, there might be something to that behavior—how paranoia about the outsider can blind us to actual pain and peril. Instead, the incident with the mysterious visitor is just an interlude before the third-act return of the men in the masks, justifying that fear and paranoia.

There's something to be said for the fact that the masked men are established as blatant ethnic stereotypes, which only adds a distasteful political layer to all of this. More to the point, though, the second act of Trespassers suggests the potential of a genre-challenging parable, only for the movie to embrace the obvious and the cruel.

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