TIFF Review: INTRUDERS

We like to tell ourselves that it’s only a dream. We like to tell ourselves that it’s just our minds playing tricks on us and making shadows look like impending danger. We like to tell ourselves that we have grown out of such juvenile fears.

We like to tell ourselves such things…that doesn’t always make them true.

INTRUDERS is the newest film from Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo – he who previously brought us INTACTO and the underrated 28 WEEKS LATER. Here he offers us parallel stories about the same boogieman. This dastardly villain is borne from nighttime anxiety, and his name is Hollowface. In this film, he terrorizes two different children – a young Spanish boy, and a pre-teen English girl. The boy’s mother doesn’t quite know what to do about her son’s visions and terrors, with notions that a priest might be the best to cast out such evil. The teenage girl relies on her father played by Clive Owen to ease her anxieties. Her father is a great sport about everything, until he too starts to find himself one-on-one with Hollowface.

INTRUDERS is more a thriller than a horror, as there are very few genuine scares to be had. As a thriller though, the construct is beautiful. It plays very nicely with the notion of the boogiman in the closet, and often makes it more plausible by overlaying it with the very real fear of a home invader. It’s something the Spanish are doing very well these days – building their tales of terror around places that are supposed to make us feel secure.

Clive Owen is one of the best things about this film, since he embodies a great dad. He’s not only the sort that still keeps items that stopped his daughter’s nighttime fears from her childhood days, but is also the sort to build an effigy in the backyard and light it up if it will make his daughter feel better. I can’t speak for you folks, but when my parents symbolically set my fear on fire as a kid, I slept like a log!

INTRUDERS also comes with a wonderful hinge that brings the Spanish story and the English story together – a good thing since I did start to wonder why we were experiencing the tale of Hollowface from two different angles until it became abundantly clear. Speaking of big bad, the design and use of Hollowface is beautiful. He’s a memorable monster in a time where achieving such things is difficult, and the way he plays upon the fear of the unknown (in this case, that empty spot where his face should be) is gorgeous.

This is a thriller with wonderful writing, gorgeous photography, and a great hook. I’d suggest you keep it in mind and give it a look when it gets released in the coming months. Just don’t plan on getting a good night’s sleep afterward.