Intruder Review

Movie: Intruder
By: Kries Tyfus
Date: July 5, 2011

Will the employees of Walnut Lake Market ever work again?

It's 15 minutes before closing time. The employees of Walnut Lake Market don’t have a clue that this could be their last working day. There’s a killer on the loose.. and ‘mercy’ isn’t in his dictionary.

I remember picking this up for only a few bucks. Never heard of it and didn’t know what to expect. The cover and story made me curious, so I just bought it for the heck of it. From the looks of it, it was obvious that I was dealing with a low-budget production. I didn’t even know who the f*ck Scott Spiegel was at the time. Oh well.. I just sat down and started watching.

Intruder is about a group of youngsters working at the local grocery store called Walnut Lake Market. The store is about to close and the employees are getting ready for their late night shift. After Jen, one of the main characters, brought in all the shopping carts from outside, there’s one last customer to get served.. her rowdy ex-boyfriend Craig, who just got out of jail. He’s pleading her to take him back, but Jen has different thoughts. Things are getting out of hand and Craig got himself into a fight with the rest of her colleagues. Finally he gets thrown out and everyone is relieved. Or are they?

When everybody is settled down, the staff is called together to give them the big news: savings resulted into the store getting sold and their contracts will be expired soon. This is the exact reason of everybody working overtime, because they have to change all the prizes for the upcoming sale. Soon after, one of the staff members, Linda, is getting brutally murdered at the store’s parking lot. This is just the first in a series of vicious kills yet to come. Intruder is one of those ‘who-did-it?’-flicks that make you think and wonder for about 80 minutes straight. Although, when you pay about enough attention, you actually know who the killer is from the very start. Or maybe it’s because I’ve seen way too many of those movies. Or maybe it’s because my name was Sherlock Holmes in my previous life.

Because I started watching a movie that I had never heard of and didn’t know what to expect, I have to say that it’s actually surprisingly good. The acting isn’t really to be called outstanding and I think the composer might have been killed also during the shoots, because the music is just awful. There’s the produce guy Joe with his walkman on, listening to the same corny 80s dance song over and over again. The fighting scene between Jen’s furious ex-boyfriend and the store’s employees is even worse than the average ladies wrestling bout as seen on WWE television. And the scene where Jen is getting chased and moves between shelves is worth one of the biggest facepalms in the history of horror filmmaking.

But on the other hand, the murder scenes are quite enjoyable and there’s enough blood, splatter and gore for you to get excited about. Scott Spiegel also used different types of camera angles that shows you how passionate he is and how he understands the business. There’s even a cameo appearance by the legendary Bruce Campbell and a small role for Sam Raimi. The entire movie is shot in and around the store, but that doesn’t make this slasher any less good. It comes with some sort of dark humour too. Such as a body slized in half and there’s a price tag on it that says ‘’50% off”. Watching this movie made me realize once again how I love corny, cheap and bad-acted low budget horror flicks from the 80s. Intruder is definitely one of the finest 80s slashers I have seen.