The Home Invasion Thriller Heating Up On Netflix
The main reason why so many thrillers are mostly set in a single location is financial. The fewer locations a movie uses, the cheaper it is to make. The other reason is to up the tension. Tight quarters make for intimate, high-pressure stories. Home invasion thrillers, for example, tap into the universal fear of a person's sanctuary being made unsafe, and use the limited location to amp up the claustrophobic terror. There's nothing scarier than killers attacking your fortress of last resort.
The latest movie to tap into the fear of home invasion — and the fear that your partner is lying and keeping terrible secrets — is "Intrusion," which just started streaming on Netflix. "Intrusion" stars Frieda Pinto and Logan Marshall-Green (who previously starred in one of the best single-location thrillers in recent memory, "The Invitation") as a married couple who have recently moved into a big, isolated house in a small town in New Mexico. The husband, Henry, is an architect, and he designed the house. Meera is a therapist and cancer survivor. One night, their house is broken into, and Henry shoots the intruders with a gun Meera didn't know he had. Meera suspects they were targeted, and Henry is acting very, very suspicious.
So suspicious, in fact, that the mystery is not if Henry is involved in something shady, but how.
Intrusion is a serviceable thriller
"Intrusion" is directed by Adam Salky and written by Chris Sparling, who wrote "Buried," one of the most confined thrillers of all time. That's the one where Ryan Reynolds is trapped in a coffin.
The movie is getting mixed reviews from critics, with a 57% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics are finding that the movie squanders an intriguing premise and strong performances, especially a supremely sinister one from Logan Marshall-Green, on a predictable plot. "There's an incredibly interesting story lurking somewhere beneath 'Intrusion,' about the way mistrust and paranoia can slowly chip away at a marriage," IndieWire's Siddhant Adlakha wrote in his review. "The film, however, eschews this tale in favor of something a little more rote, and a little bit trashier."
But critics agree that it's a very watchable, reasonably entertaining film if you aren't expecting anything more than that from it. It's a very typical Netflix thriller, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.