Review: 'The Intruder' is truly terrible, but could become a future cult classic

Dennis Quaid pulls off a masterclass in over performance in this dreadful, yet thoroughly enjoyable, home invasion flick

Michael Ealy, from left, Meagan Good and Dennis Quaid in a scene from 'The Intruder.' Serguei Baschlakov / Sony Pictures via AP

This may sound strange since I have awarded this film a lowly one-star rating, but you should absolutely go and see it if you have a couple of hours to spare this weekend. The Intruder is terrible, but in years to come I'm confident it will become a cult classic in the "it's-so-bad-it's-good" pantheon. In fact, I had to wrestle with my conscience over whether to award it one star or five. It could be either, but it's definitely nowhere in between, and I was undeniably entertained.

On the face of it, we have a by-the-numbers home invasion genre piece, and the script, from genre stalwart David Loughery (Lakeview Terrace, Obsessed) delivers exactly that. It's the characters that really make this movie what it is, or isn't.

Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie (Meagan Good) are an upper middle class couple from the city, looking for a country pad to settle down and raise a family. Charlie (Dennis Quaid) is selling just such a pad in California’s Napa Valley. Despite the fact that when our lovebirds go to view the house, Charlie introduces himself by slaughtering a baby deer five feet in front of them, Scott and Annie don’t bat an eyelid or consider prolonging their search. This is definitely the dream house for them.

Charlie sells up, ready to move to Florida and live with his daughter, but he just can’t stay away. He turns up at all hours of day and night to mow the lawn, offer gifts or put up Christmas decorations — another strange quirk of this film is that events only seem to take place on holidays. The weeks in between are fast-forwarded as Charlie gears for his next festive intervention.

We’ve all heard of occasions where a friend or relative has visited an old home and didn’t like what the new occupants have done to the wallpaper, but Charlie takes this to extremes. He really loves this house.

Scott begins to grow weary of Charlie’s endless, creepy visits. Annie on the other hand is a thing of wonder. This character utterly lacks any form of critical judgment. She is naivety personified. When Scott learns a grisly murder has taken place in one of the bedrooms and points out a suspicious red patch on the doorframe, her response is “you think it’s blood?” Yes, Annie, it’s definitely blood.

She invites Charlie in for regular evening soirées despite the growing mountain of evidence that he’s a psychopath. I swear at one point Charlie even calls her by his dead wife’s name, though that could have been my own growing sense of incredulity playing tricks with my mind, and she carries on pouring drinks.

Quaid, meanwhile, has pulled out a performance of joy as the psycho killer. When he’s not giving us yet another jump scare illuminated by lightning in some corner of the house or garden, he’s working facial ticks, physical contortions, glassy-eyed stares and animal growls as if this were his last ever role, which it could well be if casting directors see this.

It's like he took every classic movie villain from Johnny in The Shining (who gets a nice visual tribute in the final confrontation), to Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, to The Beast in Split and threw them into a huge comedy blender to see what came out the other end.

Ealy has the tough task of playing straight man through all this utter insanity, and it’s hard to know whether his withering looks are actually aimed at his wife’s unending naivety, or the scenes of cinematic carnage going on around him.

For good measure, we also get an utterly misplaced R’n’B soundtrack, a needless office affair subplot that is forgotten as quickly as it’s introduced, and more jump scares than could ever be reasonably be placed in a 102-minute movie, let alone one that has no pace anyway.

But here’s the rub — in years to come this could well be reappraised by academics not only as so-bad-it’s-good, but also as a crucial document of race relations in Trump-era America. Charlie’s not-so-subtly red baseball cap wearing blue collar American versus Scott’s millennial media luvvie made good, old money versus new, black versus white.

It's almost a B, or perhaps C-movie Get Out, and that's sort of good. But also really bad.