Intruders (2015 film)

This article is about the 2015 American film. For the Canadian film, see The Intruders (2015 film). For the French-Canadian film, see Shut In (2016 film).

Shut In
Directed by	Adam Schindler
Written by	T.J. Cimfel David White
Produced by	Christa Campbell Matthew Lamothe Brian Netto Robert Van Norden Tommy Vlahopoulos Erik Olsen
Starring	Beth Riesgraf Rory Culkin Martin Starr Jack Kesy
Music by	Frederik Wiedmann
Production companies	Campbell-Grobman Films Jeff Rice Films Tommy V Productions
Release dates	July 12, 2015 (2015-07-12) (LA Film Festival) January 15, 2016 (2016-01-15) (U.S.)
Country	United States
Language	English

Intruders (also known as Shut In and Deadly Home) is a 2015 American horror thriller film directed by Adam Schindler and written by T.J. Cimfel and David White. The film stars Beth Riesgraf, Rory Culkin, Martin Starr, and Jack Kesy.

Plot

Anna suffers from severe agoraphobia and has not left her childhood home in the ten years since her father died. She takes care of her brother, Conrad, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, and receives daily deliveries of food from Dan, with whom she is friendly. She finds her brother outside on the porch swing in the middle of the night. The next day he tries to have a conversation with her but she won’t have anything to do with it. He encourages her to move on and leave the house. Conrad’s lawyer arrives and tries to get Anna to sign papers Conrad has had made up. Conrad soon dies and the next day Dan arrives with another delivery of food. Anna explains the situation, and they commiserate over how they both feel trapped in their current situations. Anna shows Dan a large sum of money and offers it to him as a chance to escape his circumstances, but he declines.

The day of Conrad's funeral, three men (Perry, Vance and his brother J.P.) break into Anna's house looking for the money, expecting the house to be empty. When they discover her, they are surprised to find that she cannot leave the house. Trying to get information out of her and draw her out of hiding. To lure her out, Perry gruesomely kills her pet bird. She refuses to reveal the location of the money, and Perry decides that they cannot leave Anna alive. Meanwhile, Dan arrives, looking for Anna since she was not at her brother's funeral. The thieves restrain Dan and begin to search the house for the money. Anna escapes, kills Vance, and drags him into the basement. The other two thieves go to the basement to investigate, and Anna activates a switch that retracts the staircase.

Anna confronts Dan, who admits that he told Vance about the money but never intended the robbery. He tells her that he confided about her and her offer, that he couldn’t get her out of his head. She asks him if he scouts houses for his friends to rob. Angry and hurt, Anna breaks two of his fingers and cuts his bonds. Concerned for his safety because of his kindness she tries to get him to jump into the basement, to avoid injury, but when he is unable to turn and make himself jump, she pushes him into the basement. He dislocates his knee in the fall. J.P. pops Dan’s kneecap into socket while Perry holds him down. Perry takes pleasure in Dan’s pain and comments on how fun it was. Made angrier by Dan, Perry stomps hard on his injured knee and J.P. pushes him hard against a wall. Using a surveillance system, Anna lures J.P. into a separate room by telling him there is a first-aid kit in another room and locks him in. He finds himself in what is a girls bedroom. Meanwhile, Perry finds a rock and breaks a lock in an attempt to escape. When Anna sees that he’s in a second room with a noose and a number of tools, she grabs a hammer and heads to the basement. Anna sneaks into the basement and bludgeons him with a hammer. Perry gets up from the ground, seemingly unphased, and attacks Anna, strangling her with his bare hands. As Anna nears death, Perry’s wound catches up to him and he dies just before he could kill her. Anna spends a moment recovering from that assault before she hears someone upstairs.

Downstairs, Dan attempts to escape as well. He finds Perry dead and a body in a freezer. He crawls through a hole in the wall behind an appliance. Conrad's lawyer has arrived to check on Anna, and lets herself into the broken door. Almost immediately Anna shows up with a white shawl covering the bloody mess. She also takes a knife from the kitchen that she hides, in case she can’t get the lawyer to leave. The lawyer asked about Dan’s car and the break-in, she says that when she didn’t come to the door, Dan broke in thinking she might have hurt herself. Dan has made his way up the stairs behind the wall and begins yelling for help and banging on the door. The women hear him banging and his muffled shouts. Anna tries to pass it off as an old radiator, but the lawyer is skeptical until she tells her that Dan is downstairs working on it. After the lawyer leaves, Anna walks into a room and approaches a chest with a padlock where Dan is banging on the door. Anna take him downstairs and places him behind a door. When it is locked, she opens the wardrobe on the basement bedroom and Dan falls into the same room as J.P.

As Anna watches J.P. and Dan, the former deduces the truth of their situation: Conrad was a serial killer who lured his victims into the basement and killed them while Anna watched. Anna confirms this but clarifies that all of their victims were child molesters, as was Anna and Conrad's father. Anna recalls the story of her father's abuse and her brother killing their father. After an upsetting conversation with J.P., Anna promises to release Dan if he kills J.P. and reveals a gun with a single bullet, but Dan refuses. J.P. grabs the gun from Dan and Anna tries to convince him to kill himself for ultimately causing his younger brothers death. He pretends to be affected by his actions and eventually laughs, telling he he’d rather live with his actions for a thousand years instead of commit suicide. He points the gun with its single bullet at Dan, and Anna unlocks the door. J.P. and Dan escape, but J.P. stops to drag his brother's body upstairs and outside, stopping for the money on his way.

In a fit of rage J.P. decides to go back in for revenge and when Dan tries to stop him, J.P. knocks him out. Hoping to burn her to death in the house, J.P. returns inside and pours gasoline everywhere. Anna attacks him and a struggle ensues. He chases Anna up the stairs and drags her into the bedroom. He throws her on the bed, grabs a pillow and begins to choke her to death with it. He speaks to her, mimicking what her father might have said about the abuse and alludes to raping her after she passes out. Dan arrives when she is again near death and distracts J.P. enough for her to grab the gun from J.P.'s pants and shoot him in the chest. Dan and Anna share a long look and he turns to leave without a word. Anna sits in the living room and listens to him start the car and drive away. After a long moment of introspection, she stands and takes one step out the door. On her way out she sparks the blaze, burning the house and its secrets.

Cast

• Beth Riesgraf as Anna Rook
• Rory Culkin as Dan Cooper
• Jack Kesy as J.P. Henson
• Martin Starr as Perry Cuttner
• Joshua Mikel as Vance Henson
• Timothy T. McKinney as Conrad Rook
• Leticia Jimenez as Charlotte

Production

On August 28, 2014, it was announced that Adam Schindler would be directing a horror thriller, Shut In, written by T.J. Cimfel and David White, which Schindler would produce along with Jeff Rice, Lati Grobman and Erik Olsen.

Filming began in late-August 2014 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Release and reception

The film premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 12, 2015.

The film received mixed reviews. Dennis Harvey of Variety called the film "an efficiently engineered suspenser, with solid performances and a tight pace", though writing that the film's "third act is a bit of a letdown". Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film two out of a possible four stars, referring to it as a "promising film that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, like a meal well-presented on the plate that just doesn't fill you up".

External links

• Intruders at IMDb
• Intruders at Rotten Tomatoes