{"id":11763,"date":"2019-05-03T18:26:45","date_gmt":"2019-05-04T01:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=11763"},"modified":"2019-05-03T18:42:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-04T01:42:41","slug":"review-the-intruder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-the-intruder\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Domestic Thriller <i>The Intruder<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The only way to enjoy <strong><em>The Intruder<\/em><\/strong>, a mediocre domestic thriller with a plot that&#8217;s entirely predictable (and totally spelled out in the trailer) is to pretend it has more subtext than it does. Viewed in a certain way, for example, it could be seen as the story of how white, conservative, gun-loving Baby Boomers have screwed things up but refuse to step aside and let the younger, browner generation take over. The Boomer even wears a red hat!<\/p>\n<p>On the surface, though &#8212; which I believe is the only level intended by writer David Loughery (<em>Lakeview Terrace<\/em>) or director Deon Taylor (<em>Traffik<\/em>, <em>Meet the Blacks<\/em>) &#8212; it&#8217;s just the story of San Francisco ad exec Scott Russell (Michael Ealy) and his wife, Annie (Meagan Good), buying a fabulous, century-old, $3.5-million house in Napa, way off the main road, isolated from everyone. The seller, gregarious but slightly simple-headed widow Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid), is moving to Florida to live with his daughter. But he can&#8217;t seem to let go of the house, which he&#8217;s lived in his entire life. Staying at a motel in town before the Florida move, he&#8217;s constantly showing up to mow the lawn and whatnot, seemingly forgetting that the place doesn&#8217;t belong to him anymore. He is appalled by every change the Russells make to the house and property. He becomes a stalker very quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Scott thinks the guy is a nut; Annie, who has the worst instincts of any woman in a film this year, thinks he&#8217;s harmless. (The only way a woman, especially a woman of color, could miss the red flags in Charlie&#8217;s behavior is for her to be fictional and written by a man.) Friction develops between husband and wife on this issue, further complicated by Scott&#8217;s history of infidelity and current flirtations with ice cream parlor clerks. A few lines of dialogue halfheartedly draw a comparison between the &#8220;manly men&#8221; of Charlie&#8217;s generation and the progressive but effete men of today, but that theme is not developed. In all, the movie is nothing you haven&#8217;t seen before.<\/p>\n<p>It has one bright spot, though: Dennis Quaid being a psycho. Not a lot, unfortunately, but enough to hint at how intimidating and fearsome he can be when he lets loose. The film shows us Charlie&#8217;s point of view frequently, but there&#8217;s only one moment where we actually get inside his head for a brief fantasy, and it&#8217;s spectacular. That jaw-dropping moment would lose its power if we visited Charlie&#8217;s thought process regularly, and maybe even get campy. But at least it would have been interesting! As it is, we have to make our own fun. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11378\" src=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/crookedc.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"21\" height=\"24\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Grade: <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">C<\/span><\/h3>\n<h5><em>1 hr., 42 min.; rated PG-13 for violence, terror, some sexuality, language and thematic elements<\/em><\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<h6><em>Join our <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedmarquee.us16.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=dc6679cd997ec610eeaf50562&amp;id=db71dbf4c3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mailing list<\/a>! Follow us on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CrookedMarquee\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>! <a href=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/writers-guidelines\/\">Write<\/a>\u00a0for us!<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The only way to enjoy The Intruder, a mediocre domestic thriller with a plot that&#8217;s entirely predictable (and totally spelled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":11764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}