Intrusion

Director: Adam Salky
Starring: Freida Pinto, Logan Marshall-Green, Robert John Burke, Sarah Minnich, Yvette Fazio-Delaney, Clint Obenchain, Mark Silvertstein, Megan Elisabeth Kelly   
Running Time: 92 min.
Rating: NR

★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

Netflix's Intrusion features one of those impossibly cool modern houses that you either see exclusively in movies like this or within the pages of Architectural Digest. Cavernous, sleekly sterile and set alone against a vast desert landscape, it's the real star, but won't be mistaken for a "home" so much as an impeccably designed building where two people happen to sleep. In this instance, the lack of a security system could serve as the equivalent of a blinking neon sign reading, "Intruders Welcome." It should take the average viewer less than 15 minutes to figure out things are off since home invasions are rarely ever about home invasions at all, the actual break-in functioning as an inciting plot device for the script to take us somewhere else. 

Director Adam Salky's film is about secrets between spouses and much of its first half is at least partially successful and competent at conveying that, bolstered by some strong acting, a fairly intriguing set-up and a patient groundswell of suspense. Then it shows its cards too early. Way too early. And we're left wondering what's left while awaiting the protagonist to come to conclusions we already arrived at a while earlier. The film's in a tough spot because there's only one explanation to the mystery when no other alternative makes sense. Still, you hope for one because, from a craft standpoint, it's not terrible as far as thrillers like these go. But once everything's all laid out, it's just kind of done.

Married couple Meera (Frieda Pinto) and Henry (Logan Marshall-Green) have just moved from Boston to their new dream house in Coralles, New Mexico, designed and built by architect Henry. A recent breast cancer survivor, Meera is on edge worrying that the disease may return, but her husband's unqualified support provides great comfort, as they share phone-less date nights to go out and relax. After one, they return to discover the house has been burglarized, and at the urging of the local police Detective Morse (Robert John Burke), Henry installs a security system. A few nights later, the electricity goes out and they're awakened when masked men intrude, tying Meera up as Henry uses his hidden gun, shooting them. 

Henry wants to move past all this while Meera is traumatized, only further rattled that one of the men her husband shot could potentially have important information regarding a missing local girl (Megan Elisabeth Kelly). As strange clues pop up about the intruders, Meera does some digging, discovering that Henry may be holding some info back about what these men were really after. Soon she's torn between her loyalty to him and discovering the ugly truth of what happened, as dangerous as that may be. 

The home invasion is merely warm-up for what follows, as screenwriter Chris Sparling sows the seeds of doubt and mistrust between a couple who up to that point seemed to have an ideal marriage. But their far differing reactions to this event bring certain questions to the surface and the script is none too subtle in announcing this is about never really knowing the person you're with. That's made abundantly clear when the rest of the film's running time consists almost entirely of Meera sleuthing around town and in the house to find answers, all while Henry sensitively tries to convince her there's nothing to worry about.

It's a pleasure seeing Freida Pinto anchoring this since she brings more to the role than most would, rarely playing Meera as any kind of damsel in distress, entirely cerebral in her actions and asserting real agency to get answers viewers have already beaten her to. The wheels are always turning, and even if her character has a handful of intelligent, quietly intense moments opposite Henry, it's just not helpful that we know the entire outcome long before her suspicions truly kick in. 

Logan Marshall-Green continues his formidable streak as an acting chameleon, again unrecognizably disappearing deep enough into a part that you'd have trouble picking him out of a lineup. Clean cut, calm and reassuring, it's tough to believe this is even the same bearded, disheveled guy everyone mistook for Tom Hardy in 2015's far superior residential thriller, The Invitation. And yet he finds ways to make Henry just a little too smooth and impossibly supportive enough that we have to stop and consider something's not quite right. 

With each unsurprising turn of the plot, the restraint and nuance Pinto and Green attempt to bring to the material is dampened when the wheels fly off the narrative heading toward the "big reveal." As much as their performances do keep it watchable as it crosses the finish line, the script really pushes the envelope far in terms of predictibility, regardless of whether it even makes logical sense. The acting, some nice photography and admittedly impressive production design become harder to tout as major accomplishments when viewers are yelling at their screens for a the main character to figure it out already. 

While the closing minutes are tension-filled and relatively well directed by Salky, it's hamstrung by the inevitability that Intrusion can only go so far. With a pay off that shares more in common with a random Saw entry than you'd hope, the end result isn't boring, just entirely forgettable, which is a shame considering how the early scenes teased a potential sophistication to the material that could have been built upon. But by patterning itself after other thrillers of the same ilk, it's indistinguishable, wasting an opportunity to present a more deeply disturbing social commentary.