Intruder

Intruder follows an underground fighter, Bree (Dana Godfrey) and her estranged father as they attempt to steal a spacecraft to escape Earth, only to discover a deadly stowaway who damages their life support, forcing them to survive in the deadly and claustrophobic confines of space. A blend of sci-fi horror conceptually borrowing from the iconography of Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979), the film visually and thematically employs social commentary on capitalist corporations within its futuristic landscape. It wears its influences on its sleeve to a fault and to the point of satire.

Formally, the piece is overall competently shot and utilises a splendid use of blocking as well as unique colour grading. Visually, this is also a lot of fun, even with its lo-fi sensibilities, thanks to its limited budget and its genre-bending nature. The film almost has a B-movie feel to it and is reminiscent of the kind of films Troma Entertainment used to produce. Even though some of the VFX are inadequate, it almost adds to the feeling that director Christian Jude Grillo was attempting to create. The horror sensibilities surprisingly work well with the sci-fi elements, even with its jarring tonal shift through the midway point of the runtime. It owes a substantial amount to the films it borrows from. Dana Godfrey portrays Bree, and she gives a solid central performance balancing the comedic and more serious elements suitably well. Another standout aspect is the hand-to-hand combat, which is infrequently prevalent, with bare-knuckle fights emphasising the brutality of Bree’s MMA fighting techniques. The bloodshed on screen feels incredibly visceral to witness as a viewer.

Unfortunately, outside of its technical standouts, the piece has little to offer thanks to uneven pacing, jarring edits and a severe lack of characterisation for the audience to latch onto and fear for their fate. Breaking news segments are oddly implemented into the narrative, which do, however, play well into the satirical nature thematically, but are jarring when inserted bizarrely throughout sequences of tension. While tonal shifts are admirable, both halves of the runtime feel like completely different films entirely, with no real sense of direction of where it's taking the audience. The corporation known as MICAH-TECH feels like a direct carbon copy of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the Alien franchise, as it embarrassingly homages other franchises to the point of unoriginality. While the survival horror elements are serviceable to the plot, the film struggles to create any claustrophobia or fear that the titles it is borrowing from did substantially better. The narrative becomes so unengaging thanks to stagnant pacing and oddly inserted flashbacks that may potentially take the audience out of the experience entirely.

The tonal balance is incredibly uneven and baffling, with what the filmmakers were attempting to convey to the viewer about the greed of corporations, and the narrative concludes bafflingly with no sense of direction or thematic flair. Another major issue with the pacing is the prolonged runtime; trimming down the final edit could have potentially enhanced the overall finished piece by cutting out unnecessary scenes of exposition and exploring the deeper characterisation of other central characters. For example, further fleshing out ideas in the screenplay, such as why the director desperately wanted Bree to be an MMA fighter.

Intruder is a genre-bending amalgamation of previous pieces of media with unique formal choices and a conceptually fun premise to boast. However, it feels like a chore to sit through, thanks to a baffling tonal redirect and borrowing too heavily from other pieces of pop culture, which executed their risky concepts much more earnestly. The result is an unfortunate and confusing attempt at a campy sci-fi horror piece of guerrilla filmmaking.