Cast of The Intruder (2019)- a critique by Chris Stuckmann

Full-text transcript of the review of The Intruder:

[00:00:04] The intruder was directed by Deon Taylor and stars Michael Ealy, Megan Good and Dennis Quaid and is a story of a very successful couple that buy a new house from Dennis Quaid. His character used to live there and is very attached to this house. And as they move in, they begin to notice that he keeps coming over a lot. He wants to cut the grass. He wants to help with home projects. He’s inviting himself over quite often and he begins to make the situation very uncomfortable. And as you might expect, eventually violence ensues and horrible things happen. There was something I could not help but think about while I was watching this movie, and that’s a film called Cold Creek Manor that came out in 2003 that starred Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone, Stephen Dorff and a young Kristen Stewart. That film was about Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone, who bought an old house. Stephen Dorff shows up and says, No, this is my house. I live here. He wants to help around the house with projects and eventually violence ensues. And now we have Dennis Quaid playing the Stephen Dorff character. It’s almost like a weird pseudo spinoff in an alternate universe. This film was distributed by Sony Screen Gems that makes quite a bit of films with the same cast members. I’ve talked about this in the past on my channel. I think when the bow breaks was the last time I discussed this, where they kind of have this revolving door of the same cast members that appear in the same films.

[00:01:20] Morris Chestnut, Michael Ealy is a big one, too. He’s in a lot of films made by Sony Screen Gems, and they all have a similar feel, a similar budget, a similar plot. They all go for the same type of modest thrills while also having a lot of PG 13 sex. And the intruder is no different. This film is littered with false jump scares that become unintentionally hilarious after a while, a musical score so obvious that you can see everything that’s about to happen coming a mile away because the music warns you tons of unnecessary, gratuitous MTV music video, sex scenes with the camera panning up Megan Good’s body like she’s some object and a third act with a bunch of scenes that are supposed to be scary, but really just come off as very uncomfortable. But the worst fault of this movie is its script and how it treats its characters and how it asks us as the audience to accept the dumbest decisions I’ve seen characters make in a movie in months. These guys are so, so stupid and I just can’t get behind them. It actually makes the characters that you’re supposed to be rooting for extremely unlikable to the point where you’re actually rooting for the villain. The progression of the plot, which is, by the way, stretched out somehow to over one hundred minutes, even though this should be like an eighty five minute movie, relies entirely on Megan Goode’s character.

[00:02:39] Feeling sorry for Dennis Quaid character. She feels bad. He’s created this backstory that makes him look good. And Michael Ealy is jealous because Megan Good likes Dennis Quaid a little bit. But that’s OK because Michael Ealy is off at his job flirting with random people and flirting with customers and flirting with people that he might sleep with. And there’s all of this relationship baggage that set up throughout this movie that leads to nothing. And I mean. Nothing. It’s just there to elongate the runtime. There’s probably 20 minutes of scenes here that could be removed. The best part of the movie, in fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the only good part of this film is Dennis Quaid. He is giving a suitably over-the-top performance. And this movie does not deserve this performance. He is the only person in the film that seems to be having fun who understands how to make a film like this as good as it could be. Everyone else in the movie is taking it so, so seriously, no doubt from direction that was given to them to be that serious. And here’s Johnny, that it makes it hard to appreciate the type of B movie thriller this could have been with Dennis Quaid fun performance and a considerably more tongue in cheek and in the know screenplay.

[00:03:56] This could have been really cool, but it’s just trying to be so goddamn serious. It thinks it’s this amazing story and it’s just not it’s the same story we’ve seen a thousand times. Speaking of that, I want to talk about a film that came out last year called Traffic. This film starred Paula Patton was also directed by Deon Taylor. And I saw it in theaters and I really did not like it. In fact, I didn’t review his movie last year because I honestly felt kind of bad because it was a small film and I was like, all right. I wasted my time. I wasted my money, but I’m not going to shit all over his movie. It’s a tiny movie. People will see it. It’ll make its budget back. That’s fine. Then I saw this film. This is the second time I’ve paid for one of his films, and it’s the same movie just shifted around the first film. Traffic was about sex trafficking and it had Paula Patton and Omar Epps as a couple that were in the woods and some sex traffickers attack them and then they have to run from them. And that’s basically the third act. But the first act, the movie was just sex scenes with Paula Patton camera panning all over her body needlessly like she was some object.

[00:04:58] And then all of a sudden they tried to have a message about sex trafficking in there. But it was also trying to be a thriller produced by Sony Screen Gems that made money that was like a weird music video for like the first act. And it was just kind of shameless. But I was like, you know what, whatever. Then I saw this movie and it was the same thing. It was the same thing. It was a movie that tried to sneak in themes. We’re going to get into some spoilers here. And I just I have to. I have to, because it’s actually something that kind of bothered me. Like I was like, this is a little shameless and kind of sad, actually. So if you wanted to see the intruder, I’m going to talk about some things that happened in the end of the film right now. But I’m obviously not really recommending that you see it or waste your money on this movie. So that’s your spoiler warning. Here we go. So randomly in the movie, Michael Elys character says that someone he loved, I forget if it was his brother or his cousin, I think it was his brother was gunned down in the street. And so he hates guns. He doesn’t want guns in the house at all. Guns are very bad.

[00:06:01] He hates them. Please don’t bring guns near by the house. But he just he says this, you know, we don’t we don’t even get a flashback, at least like the most basic form of show. Don’t tell. We are told this happens. That’s all we know in this one quick scene. There’s a lot of exposition like that where the characters just sort of spout what happened to them or or people show up at a bar and we learn about a back story with Dennis Quaid character. Someone just tells us and we’re like, oh, so that’s what really happened. It happens consistently. It’s very lazy screenwriting. So at the end of the film, though, throughout all of this movie where we’ve had Michael Ealy, every time he sees Dennis Quaid holding a gun, because when we first meet Dennis Quaid, he’s hunting a deer and Michael Eeles freaked out by this gun. He’s like, don’t come near me with this gun. So we have this theme throughout it, you know, where guns are bad and stuff. Then at the end of the movie, Michael Elys got a gun and Dennis Quaid has been beaten almost to death. And Michael Ealy shoots Dennis Quaid with the gun and says, go to hell. Then the end credits start with the song ripped up by Casanovva. I just started laughing. It was like, wow, this movie tried to have a message about gun violence.

[00:07:13] Then it took its lead character, had him hold a gun, say go to hell like it was commando. All of a sudden he shoots the bad guy and then we get ripped up by Casanova like it’s some cool action movie or something like what’s your message here? What’s the message of this movie? It makes no sense. It’s a shameless film with horrible characters, with one good performance in it, and it’s stretched so long with like twenty minutes of scenes that could be cut out. This is a really bad movie, but it could become an unintentionally funny movie that you might watch at parties if you just want to laugh or have a good time, or if you just want to see a movie where you sort of shout at the screen a lot. This is definitely that film for you. I’m going to give the intruder a D minus. Dennis Quaid is over. The top performance was the best part of the movie, and this film should have been like that. And it just didn’t appreciate what it had and it tried to. Be so overly serious, guys, if you did see the film, let me know what you thought, I wouldn’t recommend it, obviously. Guys, thank you so much for watching. Look forward to more of you very soon. And if you like this, you can click right here and get minimized.