Working Night Shift At A Grocery Store Must Be Fun
What impressed me about this movie, Intruder, wasn’t the story, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it. The parts that were impressive were the camera work, effects, and characters. We’ll expand more on these points in the dedicated sections. To get things framed up, let’s briefly cover the story. A group of people are working overnight in a grocery store that they find out is closing. An angry ex-boyfriend, who is also an ex-convict, shows up to beg for his girlfriend back. Soon, the employees start getting knocked off one by one. Conveniently, it takes the police the length of the film to show up and make arrests. The ending makes no sense but certainly catches you off guard. Yes, there are plot twists too. Normally, I’m giving spoilers but not this time. On to what grabbed me about Intruder.
If You Shoot Creative Videos, Intruder is a Must Watch
I enjoy shooting videos and being that I’m an artist, I like to take as creative and unorthodox approaches to this as possible. For someone like me, this movie was impressive on an artistic level. I haven’t seen any that compare honestly. Intruder had some of the most creative camera work and transitions I’ve observed. I’ll give you a few examples. One shot that was used a couple of times was a camera in a buggy (shopping cart for readers not from the Southeastern United States). You see the action from the rolling cart’s wire meshed eye. Another was a camera view from inside an old rotary telephone. With this, you were looking up at the caller through the circles where the numbers would be. Finally, a shot from beneath a broom sweeping the floor. I think this then transitioned scenes.
On transitions, Intruder is full of creative examples. I never paid attention to these until I started editing my own films. From an artistic film perspective, transitions matter. Intruder offered many but there were a couple that stood out. One is a scene where a knife is being used by a butcher to cut watermelon. Up in the air goes the blade, down into the watermelon it goes. This is repeated a few times and then the change – up in the air goes the blade, down into the victim goes the blade. You see this coming, but you never do. Another was a scene where a hammer is used to hit a man in the head. The transition here is in sound. As soon as the hammer collides, the scene changes. The next scene’s introduction is a sack of potatoes hitting the ground. The thud sound is perfect.
I don’t have as much to say on the next point, but I want to close out my amazement with the camera work in this movie. Another camera play that caught my eye involved a unique take on a not so unique scene. In one scene, a man is watching a doorknob. You’ve seen this in every film where there’s a stalker on the prowl. A potential victim knows the prowler is on the other side and preparing to enter so they stare at the door. Intruder does this same old scene differently though. As the doorknob turns, so does the camera. It puts a different twist, pun intended, on an age-old horror scene.
Ventriloquism On a Different Level
There were scenes in this movie that stood out. First, a man’s life is ended and he falls forward onto an 80s calculator positioned in front of him. Naturally, since he lands on the machine’s keypad, it continues to calculate and feed the paper through. How many people remember this? Before the days of storing past calculations in a calculator’s memory, they printed every keystroke on a paper so you could go back and fix errors. As this happens, the blood from his hand comes through on the printout. I found this to be thoughtful.
To many, ventriloquism is a scary thing. In fact, it is called automatonophobia. You can read an article about this phobia by Fear of Stuff here. Anyway, I remember Killer Klowns from Outer Space doing a scene where Officer Moony is used as a dummy. Intruder does this too but, you have no idea that it’s happening. With Officer Mooney, it was very obvious. In Intruder, you see a man whom you think was killed earlier asking for help around the end of an aisle. As the camera pans around, you see that the prowler is using the head and doing a voice. This ventriloquist scene is well done.
More Fun Facts from Intruder
Any fans of AMC’s The Walking Dead know the name Greg Nicotero. He is in this movie. He has a quick role as Townie in Car according to IMDB but according to an article by Movieweb, he designed the special effects. This article also says that he is a protege of Tom Savini who is famous for a lot but particularly Friday the 13th. Another name well known in the cult film world is Bruce Campbell. For those that don’t know, he was the main character in The Evil Dead from 1981. Bruce then went on to be in movies like Army of Darkness and Ash vs Evil Dead. Campbell also did some work in the early Spider Man movies I believe. He was paired up with the director Sam Raimi in The Evil Dead. Sam was a character in Intruder along with Bruce Campbell.
Closing Out This Blog on Intruder
Occasionally, I will get caught off guard by one of these odd movies I pick to review and blog about. I ultimately enjoy them all but, sometimes I find a movie that I have missed out on. Intruder is one of these films. I had no idea this movie was out there and I’m glad I found it. From reading this blog, you will see that I was most impressed with the camera work but overall, the story was good too. It is an 80s slasher, so it follows the formula and doesn’t really make sense. That’s what we watch these movies for though. It would be too easy for these crew to just have left the grocery store. There’s a killer on the loose in here? Let’s bounce. That’s a short movie after all.
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If you’ve seen Intruder, leave your thoughts or stories in the comments. Also, I’m always looking for other retro slasher movies to watch. What are some other ones like this? I mean, what are some that are unheard of but really good? Let me know in the comments.