WE LOVE WATCHING suspense movies so when we saw the Netflix has a new thriller, “Intrusion”, we quickly find time to watch it. The movie starts Freida Pinto, the Indian actress who gained fame for “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2008.
She has since played plum roles in films like “Rise of the Planet Apes” and “Hillbilly Elegy” and in the miniseries “Guerilla” with Idris Elba.
She now plays the lead character of Meera in “Intrusion”, a guidance counselor who is happily married to an architect, Henry (Logan Marshall Green).
They left their hurried city life in Boston and have just moved in to this very modern and huge house full of glass that Henry himself designed and built, located in an isolated remote area without any neighbors in sight.
They go out on date one night and it’s very obvious that Henry loves his wife very much even if she’s not able to give him any kids.
We learn that Meera has survived beast cancer and Henry took really good care of her until she has fully recovered. He assures her he will always be there for her.
Upon returning home, they discover that someone has broke into their house, messing up their things and stealing their laptop and the cellphones they left behind. The cops come the next day but are of little help.
Some nights later, Meera wakes up to discover there’s a brown out. Henry checks their generator and discovers that it is deliberately cut off.
He also sees that the burglars have come back to their home. He and Meera are then accosted by masked men.
Henry gets a gun that Meera doesn’t know he’s hiding in a flower pot. Meera is able to make an exit then hears gun shots.
She thinks Henry has been killed, but it turns out that her husband gets to shoot all the three men who entered their house, killing two of them and leaving one severely wounded.
They turn to be members of a notorious family of criminals who live on the seedy side of town.
A young woman from the family has also gone missing and the cops surmise that it’s her own relatives who are the culprits for her disappearance.
This is as far as we’d go in sharing the plot as anything else would be a big spoiler. If your an inveterate watcher of thrillers, then it would be very easy for you to deduce what will happen.
If you’ve seen “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman, “What Lies Beneath” with MIchelle Pfeiffer and “Thing Hears and Seen” with Amanda Seyfried, then you’d easily get our drift.
Freida Pinto does well as the baffled heroine and we get to care for her. She thought they’ve moved into a paradise of a new home where their life would be better and quieter, but it turns out to be a mystery house of horrors!
The film actually starts promisingly with the story of a loving couple who are truly so supportive of each other.
But then, somewhere along the way, the story gets convoluted, manipulative and befuddled as they mysteries pile up. It almost feels like they changed the writer and the director midway through the film’s shooting.
And they didn’t even notice that the story development has gone downhill and has become just so incredibly outlandish, no matter how hard you try to suspend your disbelief to cooperate with it.
Meera suddenly becomes a bumbling Nancy Drew who starts snooping around on her own, gathering tell tale clues about what really happened in their home. In her search for the truth, she faces bad guys who threaten her, a ferocious dog that truly scares her for the usual jump scare, and a big, no, gargantuan is the better word, surprise that would surely knock anyone out of his or her senses.
“Intrusion” starts as a home invasion movie but fails to deliver on its promise that it ends up as something else.
If you want a groundbreaking thriller with unpredictable twists and turns, then this is not the movie you’re looking for.
