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Oct 01, 2012 Issue #42 - The Protest Issue By Austin Trunick

Hollow Face, the boogeyman of Intruders, haunts children when they’re trying to sleep, lying in wait in the dark corners of their bedrooms for the perfect moment to steal their faces, because he doesn’t have his own (for some barely-explained reason). Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) leaves the film practically gore-free, a surprising approach given the setup-Hollow Face rips off faces!-and instead relies on ineffective supernatural scares.

Intruders unfolds in two parallel stories. In one, Clive Owen plays a father whose daughter accidentally invites Hollow Face into their home. In the film’s second part, which takes place in Spain and plays out in Spanish with subtitles, another young boy is terrorized by the same monster. Unfortunately, the connection between the two apparently separate stories is revealed in an unintentionally funny plot twist that’s even less believable than any of the film’s supernatural elements. Even more damning is that Hollow Face, appearing either as a fluttery CGI specter or a man in a raincoat-as if the designers couldn’t agree on their monster’s appearance from scene to scene-never seems particularly threatening. Don’t tease that we might see a face get torn off and only give us what amounts to several noogies-from-the-beyond.

(www.intruders-movie.com)

Author rating: 2/10