iCutie

On a snowy day, college student (i.e.over 18) Rose moves into a new house with her father Jerry Halshford.  She immediately bitches about the house and furniture.  She at least has the initiative to explore the house to find more to complain about.

She walks across the street and meets her neighbor Leila who asks her how she can live in that house. Rose asks her father what that means and he plays dumb.

That night she hears screams and gets out of the bed to close her bedroom door.  In the next scene, it is morning, but she is wearing different clothes.  The shortie shorts and wife-beater have been replaced by a little spaghetti strap number that we don’t get to see the bottom of.  This movie is turning me into quite the fashion maven.

While taking a PG-13 shower, she hears creaks and crashes and goes to investigate (wearing a white towel). Turns out to just be a cute young construction guy, Noah.

That night she sees a neighbor throw a large garbage bag and a shovel in the back of his pickup.  So the first thing you would think is that he’s going to bury a body.  She does go out (in her red Stanford hoodie) and finds Leila’s necklace in the snow. Or is it?

That night,in a striped t-shirt and tight jeans, she goes to the basement for the first time. She is trapped in a room but only for a few moments as if the house is playing with her. Running back upstairs, she sees a creepy doll head on the stairs that she had found earlier in a drawer.

Via a Google-doppelganger called Glide Quest, Rose discovers that her neighbor was a suspect in the disappearance of a girl named Rachel who had lived in the house.

Just as in Mr. Jones, there is a suggestion that meds might have something to do with the bizarre scenes witnesses.  Also as in that movie, this subplot goes nowhere.

The Intruders throws out a few other red herrings (or less charitably, distractions) like that. From his introduction, there is a distance in Noah that suggests that he might only exist only in Rose’s mind.  He does seem to come and go like the wind, and for sometimes dubious reasons.  He also references a construction crew which never seems to materialize.  He does seem to be real in at least one scene with Leila, though. If he is not real, like the meds, there would really be no point.

The movie would also like you to believe there are supernatural explanations for some events.  Sometimes the movie does not play fair — does that door latch move by itself? For the most part, it places the blame on a reg’lar old killer.  But then the final scene again suggests a supernatural element.  Or is it those darn meds again?

Misdirection and twists are fine, even desirable; they just weren’t handled well here. Also not handled well — Miranda Cosgrove.  She is hot and wears the hell out of her skimpy clothes (and the sweatshirts, too, for that matter), she’s just not effective as an actress.

Ultimately it is just a PG-13 movie with some cute 20 year old girls that could have aired on Lifetime or starred Ashley Judd 20 years ago. It really is more drama than horror. The mystery for me is how it ended up in my queue.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  Intruderzz — the crazy dude was one, but who was the other?
• Miranda Cosgrove was the star of iCarly.  Being a grown man, I have never seen the show; or bought the box set.