‘TRESPASSERS’ (2019) Review

The Home Invasion subgenre seems to be past its prime. From the ’70s until now, everything has been explored. From The House on the Edge of the Park pushing the social class boundaries into the faces of the viewer to The Strangers just turning the creep factor dial all the way to 10 and making the drive of the invaders to commit the crimes to be because “they were home”. 2013’s The Purge brought some alternate universe-cum-political twist to what was essentially a simple home invasion film made it feel fresh and promising for the future entries into that franchise. When I heard about Trespassers, it was being touted by the director as being influenced by Giallo cinema, my interest was piqued.

[AdSense-A]

Sarah (Angela Trimbur) and Joseph (Zach Avery) play a young couple who have AirBnB’d a gorgeous rental for a small getaway. To Joseph’s disdain, Sarah has invited Estelle (Janel Parrish) and her douche-chill inducing boyfriend Victor (Jonathan Howard) to try and rekindle a friendship that seems to have grown distant over the years. Without spoiling anything, there are tiny twists in this film that show conflicts between the characters as well as excessive nose candy usage by Victor which lay the groundwork that there is unsteady ground in this rented household. There also seems to be some trauma between Sarah and Joseph that they are trying to recover from. It is very loosely indicated that Sarah lost their first child which is only indicated by her actions and other visual indicators which feel somewhat interesting in addition with being ultimately frustrating by the end of the movie because nothing is explained. Halfway through the movie, we get a suspicious Fairuza Balk who is stating she’s a neighbor whose car has broken down and needs to use a landline because cell reception is awful. After some very clumsy Alpha Male performances and the worst excuse for a landline telephone connection disconnecting, something unexpected happens, and it isn’t the home invasion.

Originally titled and played at festivals under the title of Hell Is Where the Home Is, Trespassers is a relatively generic title and one that almost evokes the feeling like there may be some political context may come into play here given the fact that our invaders are listening to mariachi music, speak Spanish and that the setting is close to the border but sadly, it doesn’t. Director Orson Oblowitz’s biggest hurdle is that it seems he’s not sure what type of film to make here. Just when you think you’re about to go down an interesting path, you can telegraph the end of it and it doesn’t feel like it was worth the trip. Plenty of plot and character devices are thrown in here and introduced but nothing is developed fully and you get the feeling that Oblowitz is just grasping for something to make his film more interesting. While I appreciate the attempts, they just don’t land. Even the “Giallo in