DVD Review: Intruders

By
Irv
– July 9, 2012Find Others: DVD, Movie, ReviewGet More: , , , ,

STUDIO: Millennium | DIRECTOR: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo | CAST: Clive Owen, Carice Van Houten, Daniel Brühl
BLU-RAY & DVD RELEASE DATE: 7/17/2012 | PRICE: DVD $28.99, Blu-ray $29.99
BONUSES: featurettes
SPECS: R | 100 min. | Horror-thriller | 2.35:1 widescreen | Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 | English and Spanish subtitles

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

 

A creepy, gothic horror-thriller film boasting an eerie atmosphere and two surprise endings, 2011’s Intruders is helmed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, the man behind 28 Weeks Later (2007), the slam-bang sequel to Danny Boyle’s zombie opus 28 Days Later.

Intruders movie scene

Clive Owen stars in Intruders.

A Spanish production presented in English and Spanish with English subtitles, Intruders offers two parallel stories. In Spain, a young boy tells his mother that he is being terrorized by a dark, faceless creature named Hollow Face. He writes down his experiences and feelings about this monster who steals children’s faces. In England, meanwhile, a girl (Ella Purnell) finds a journal about Hollow Face and begins having nightmares, alerting her construction worker father John (Clive Owen, Trust) and mother (Carice Van Houten, Miss Minoes). Both families seek help:  The Spanish family looks to a local priest, while the English family hopes a psychiatrist (Kerry Fox, Shallow Grave) can stop the terror of Hollow Face.

Intruders is a stylized, shadowy film that leaves its audience in the dark about a lot of things until everything is sorted out in the last 15 minutes. Some fright fans will be frustrated with this approach, while others will applaud the filmmaker’s restraint and suspense-building technique. With help from Owen’s sturdy central performance, everything does come together, but audiences will need to pay close attention to the loose ends of this eerie tale as they are tied together.

The bonus package consists of two featurettes: an eight-minute piece focuses on the supernatural aspects of the story and its cultural influences, while the subsequent twenty-minute featurette looks at the physical production and offers a bunch of cast and crew interview bits.

 

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About Irv

Irv Slifkin has been reviewing movies since before he got kicked off of his high school radio station for panning The Towering Inferno in 1974. He has written the books VideoHound’s Groovy Movies: Far-Out Films of the Psychedelic Era and Filmadelphia: A Celebration of a City’s Movies, and has contributed film reportage and reviews to such outlets as Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, Video Business magazine and National Public Radio.