Invader

What is very clearly a short film premise has been stretched beyond an hour. This enables the film makers to indulge in some highly effective world building.

Great acting by the main cast, sound design and powerful use of shaky cam give a solid 55 minutes worth checking out.

Inexplicably, the film shifts perspective for the last 15 minutes for no other purpose then to get it over an hour in length.

Not that the ending is awful, but narratively irrelevant.

What could have been a nice little cliffhanger callback to 70s horror flicks instead plays out and gives nothing in return, before finally ending with another short sequence without relevance.

Still a recommend though.

This was a movie that I saw was being shown at the Gateway Film Center. Now I went to another film the night before that was hosted by a local podcast, Fright Club. They revealed that producer and co-star of this, Joe Swanberg, was going to be in attendance, so I made that showing. It wasn't until settling in to watch this that I noticed it was the new film from Mickey Keating.

Synopsis: a young woman arrives in the Chicago suburbs and begins to suspect that something terrible has happened to her missing cousin, but soon realizes that her greatest fears don't even begin to scratch the surface.

We have a simple story here and it is effective. It starts with a house being destroyed by Joe Swanberg. His character doesn't have a name from what I can see. I'll refer to him as the Invader. It is from the destruction that we see him in an upstairs room asleep. He hears sirens so he leaves.

The movie then shifts us to a young woman getting woke up on a bus. She fell asleep and it arrived at the terminal station. She is played by Vero Maynez. They hit traffic so instead of arriving at midnight, it is four in the morning. She tries to get ahold of her cousin, who she is staying with, but there's no answer. She calls who I'm guessing is her father and he says that he'll try to get in touch with them. He does give her the address.

Something to include here is that Maynez's first language is Spanish. She is in a major city that she's never been to. It is the early morning hours. Her phone doesn't have a full battery. She decides to call a cab and the driver freaks her out. She flees from him, which makes for a terrifying sequence. Our young woman then decides to walk. When she arrives at the address, it doesn't seem like anyone is home. Maynez goes about trying to figure out what happened to her cousin and it becomes a fight for survival she wasn't expecting.

That is where I'll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start is that listening to Swanberg talk about behind-the-scenes aspects helped me to enjoy this more. What makes this work for me, we have a tight 70-minute movie. There isn't any fat on this. We get subtle things that are introduced that help us understand the Invader, our lead and then another character played by Colin Huerta who wants to help. This has a breakneck speed to it as well that made me anxious in the best way possible.

What was interesting to include here was listening to Swanberg answer questions about the making of this. It sounds like he challenged writer/director Keating about different things and figured out why decisions are made in the world of the movie. An example is that the Invader later wears a leather gimp suit. He found this in the opening house he was destroying. That makes sense then why he's wearing it. What makes this terrifying is that we never learn why the invader does what he does, outside of a very The Strangers explanation that you were home. That unnerves me in a good way.

There's another aspect here with Maynez and then even a bit of Huerta. For her, she isn't from Chicago. She arrives and there is no one there to pick her up. She also cannot get in touch with them. Swanberg revealed that he helped push for this because much like me, he has traveled to a different country, alone and where you don't know the language. If I went to Chicago, New York or Los Angeles, I could get around since I speak English. Maynez's character is limited to her understanding and vocabulary. This feels like when I went to Barcelona. Like the character here, I needed to rely on my phone to help get around.

The last bit for the story that I want to include is that I love the tone that is set with the opening scene. Seeing the invader just destroy this house with no reasoning is terrifying. It makes you see how unhinged he is. We don't know what the limits that he's capable of. I'll pull in filmmaking here as well. The cinematography is tight on the characters throughout. That makes it feel like you are there with them. They will also use long shots where we are looking through a window at what characters are doing. It is swaying so it feels like we are standing there just watching and not doing anything. What they do with how this is shot and framed, that adds tension. Another aspect is sound design. The Invader walks with heavy footsteps, which makes him seem bigger than he already is. The soundtrack is also effective since there is a sequence with loud music where the base almost hurt my chest. That worked well for tension. Other than that, we have limited effects, but it doesn't necessarily need them either. What we got looked real.

There isn't much more to go into here, so in conclusion, I liked what this movie does. We have a simple story that is terrifying. We have a tight runtime and with how this was made, is just an assault in the best way possible. It made me uncomfortable. Part of that is the performances. Swanberg in what we see is terrifying and I want to help Maynez from the opening scene of her bus arriving. This works so well for what it is trying to do. I think people might have issues with the almost found footage filming style. It can be hard to see things, but that is by design. I'd recommend it if what I said sounds good.

My Rating: 8 out of 10.

Of course, IMO, this movie was slow, too much jumpy camera work, too many dark scenes (you should be able to see a bit of what's happening) & left too much incomplete by moving around or stopping action that is happening & moving to another scene with no completion, ever. I cannot believe i sat thru to the end. There was no way this would get better. No disappointment, it got worse.

The dialog was weak & unfinished. Too much left to assume. For example; what happened to the characters. May be this is good for some watchers. Even a little wrap-up would suffice. Maybe?

Be sure to watch a trailer first & save yourself some time. Or... you may like it!

No pun intended - this is quite the invasion of your senses ... especially towards the end ... we were warned that some might feel this could be too much and there would be no shame if anyone would leave the screening ... of course this playing at a horror festival (Frightfest) the chance many would actually leave was not really high ... still that ending, might ... well finish you.

That all said, if the text is right at the start of the movie ... daymn, either they have way too many houses in America and/or the same houses are being robbed/broken into ... hopefully that is. Does not really make you want to go there really ... but I assume that the statistic is being ... well that there are special places that are having more issues than other places ... and therefor raising the number (ratio) ... the movie itself feels real .. there is a bit of confusion (not just because of the camera towards the end) and there are a few cliches here ... but it is really out there ... and it does not take any prisoners once it takes off ... don't question character decisions.

And it's only an hour long.

The weight of the movie is carried entirely by Joe Swanberg's ultra-disturbing performance at the titular character. His motivation is left up to the viewer. But clearly he is a middle-aged roustabout failure with some deep-seeded anger management issues. His passion is smashing up abandoned houses where he is squatting. Amazingly enough, he finds a perfect latex catsuit worth about several hundred dollar that was just left by some irresponsible homeowner.

Then the story switches to some lady looking for her relatives and that's subtitled for what little dialogue there is while she has communication issues because of her own stubbornness.

Anyway, the paths of these two people finally collide at her relatives' house. There's an elephant statue. And then Joe Swanberg trades his latex for a police uniform and leather jacket which I also liked. Then the movie does a flashback. Then ends.

There are some great songs on the soundtrack.

It was short and interesting enough to hold my interest.