Intruders (2011)
Wow, the best of this movie is really good. There's a basic plot of a person who is being pursued by a demon, and we see this person both as a boy in Spain and as an adult (Clive Owen) in England. So the pursuit, or call it possession, by this evil thing is carried out over a long period of time, and the movie rocks back and forth between the two zones.
What makes it further complicated, and in a wonderfully childlike way, is the connection of the two zones. It's not just that the same person is affected. Without giving too much away, the boy overcomes the evil with a kind of trick of trapping it with storytelling and he hides the key to this trap high in a distant tree where it won't be found.
Except that the boy grows up, becomes Clive Owen, and has a cute daughter who loves to hear her Dad's stories and also loves to climb trees. And the spirit is on the rampage again.
There are good, if somewhat clichéd, secondary aspects, like the young priest in the Spanish part of the story (and an elderly priest for a moment, too), leading to a brief echo of "The Exorcist." And there is the contemporary schoolgirl world in England with dad and mom and school and high tech house security systems, and eventually a psychologist and a cop.
I've never heard of director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who is young and has only a few movies to his name. But I think he pulled off a really solid, complex movie in many ways. It has too many familiar tricks to be anything special, I'm sure, but it is well filmed and the pieces, while at first all over the place, do gradually fall into place. If you give it time.
But then it crashes to a convoluted, unnecessary, and sudden end. Blame the writing, for sure. And maybe some impatience in the editing room. In fact, they could have grabbed one or two brief scenes from the last fifteen minutes and had a sudden bright ending that would have been far better with some loose ends dangling. Instead, they (the filmmakers, collectively) decide to wrap up every aspect at once, including a meeting of the two halves of the story. Things get explained rather than shown. And it's all a mad rush with some evasive logic (to me). If the truth was going to set everyone free, why did it take so long? Or if storytelling, by itself, was so powerful, why hadn't the father invented some better stories for releasing them all from the terror?
As good as it is in spots I'm not positive I'd recommend seeing it. If you don't mind an improbable round up finale, go for it. There is also the nice bilingual aspect that is confused by having the story written, in the Spanish part of the movie, in English. Owen is terrific--he seems to be a fuller actor with every year--and the scenes and basic plot are interesting. Just don't worry about making good sense of things. Enjoy the ride.
Wow, the best of this movie is really good. There's a basic plot of a person who is being pursued by a demon, and we see this person both as a boy in Spain and as an adult (Clive Owen) in England. So the pursuit, or call it possession, by this evil thing is carried out over a long period of time, and the movie rocks back and forth between the two zones.
What makes it further complicated, and in a wonderfully childlike way, is the connection of the two zones. It's not just that the same person is affected. Without giving too much away, the boy overcomes the evil with a kind of trick of trapping it with storytelling and he hides the key to this trap high in a distant tree where it won't be found.
Except that the boy grows up, becomes Clive Owen, and has a cute daughter who loves to hear her Dad's stories and also loves to climb trees. And the spirit is on the rampage again.
There are good, if somewhat clichéd, secondary aspects, like the young priest in the Spanish part of the story (and an elderly priest for a moment, too), leading to a brief echo of "The Exorcist." And there is the contemporary schoolgirl world in England with dad and mom and school and high tech house security systems, and eventually a psychologist and a cop.
I've never heard of director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who is young and has only a few movies to his name. But I think he pulled off a really solid, complex movie in many ways. It has too many familiar tricks to be anything special, I'm sure, but it is well filmed and the pieces, while at first all over the place, do gradually fall into place. If you give it time.
But then it crashes to a convoluted, unnecessary, and sudden end. Blame the writing, for sure. And maybe some impatience in the editing room. In fact, they could have grabbed one or two brief scenes from the last fifteen minutes and had a sudden bright ending that would have been far better with some loose ends dangling. Instead, they (the filmmakers, collectively) decide to wrap up every aspect at once, including a meeting of the two halves of the story. Things get explained rather than shown. And it's all a mad rush with some evasive logic (to me). If the truth was going to set everyone free, why did it take so long? Or if storytelling, by itself, was so powerful, why hadn't the father invented some better stories for releasing them all from the terror?
As good as it is in spots I'm not positive I'd recommend seeing it. If you don't mind an improbable round up finale, go for it. There is also the nice bilingual aspect that is confused by having the story written, in the Spanish part of the movie, in English. Owen is terrific--he seems to be a fuller actor with every year--and the scenes and basic plot are interesting. Just don't worry about making good sense of things. Enjoy the ride.