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The haunting

effects of trauma:

the intruder ​movie review
​
​by carson timar

(AFI Fest 2020)

​
Picture


The Intruder (2020)

           Trauma is one of the hardest things for humans to overcome. Even when not directly present in one's thoughts, past trauma can haunt individuals seeping its way into nearly all aspects of life which is the focus of Natalia Meta's newest feature The Intruder. Inés (Érica Rivas) is a young woman who is exposed to a deep trauma which begins to manifest itself physically around her. This starts to take a major toll on Inés's life causing her to search for answers and closure as she starts to lose track of where reality ends and fiction begins.

From the plot alone, it is clear that The Intruder is an inspired effort on behalf of director Natalia Meta who also wrote the screenplay alongside Leonel D'Agostino and C.E. Feiling. How the film chooses to explore trauma and PTSD feels fresh and exciting, never just going through the motions leading to an emotional breakthrough. How the film embraces its chaos and more fantastical elements is also refreshing. Rather than constantly questioning what is happening to a point where the film can never fully use those choices, the film embraces these elements not necessarily as facts of the world but as facts of Inés's experience allowing the film to move forward with using them to enhance the thematic depth of the film.

Enough praise also cannot be given to the power and craft of Érica Rivas. With an inherently weird screenplay that hopes to take itself seriously despite elements that easily could have missed the mark and fallen into silliness, Rivas is the key gear to keep the machine turning showing an incredible amount of control and focus. Similar to the performance Noémie Merlant gave in Jumbo from earlier this year, Rivas knows perfectly when to lean into the camp and when to reel both the tone and audience back in with scenes of incredible emotion that often carry an impressive amount of subtlety. The film easily could and should serve as a jumping off point for Rivas to start taking more high profile roles that use her skills as an actor as from The Intruder alone, it is clear that she is an incredible talent. 

Where these aspects help the film overall connect and stand out, the one major thing working against the film is its pacing. The Intruder is an often slow journey which will undeniably lose some audience members. Especially in the set up as it takes 20-minutes for the film to get to its title card, there is a clear lack of urgency from the film which drags despite carrying only a 90-minute runtime. Where this isn't enough to ruin the thematic depth that the film has, it does cause that conversation to lose a bit of steam and make the overall viewing process a bit more tedious than it should be.

Still, The Intruder is a thematically rich and moving feature that overall finds success in its unique capturing of an authentic human experience. With inspired ideas and an endlessly impressive performance by Érica Rivas, The Intruder overall finds success even if it doesn't reach masterpiece level.

Overall Grade-B+

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