Intruder
Reviewed by YTSL
Advance warning: This Johnnie To and
Wai Ka Fai production is for those people who (can) actually enjoy enduring
the kind of suspense that contorts and ties up one's nerves and guts, and
who don't mind being scared out of their wits. To put it mildly:
I don't consider myself to fall into that category of viewer. As
such, my reactions to this blood curdling, stomach churning piece might
not be representative of this dark picture's target audience, and probably
is more extreme than what others will have (had). Nonetheless, I
think I can understand now how their second offering -- for which Tsang
Kan-Cheung was the scriptwriter as well as director -- came to be Milkyway
Image's biggest box office bomb to date even while recognizing that this
1997 film is a well-crafted piece of work. Alternatively put:
It's the kind of movie that does not exactly warrant a repeat viewing experience
and which one cannot recommend to many -- especially more squeamish --
others.
INTRUDER is a not unintelligent Category III rated
horror show that plays to -- and up -- the fears of solitary Hong Kongers.
One of these anxieties is that which is shared by many of the world's urbanites
who are solitary dwellers: Namely, that they will one day have the
misfortune of falling prey in their own homes to a dangerous stranger who
they hadn't thought to distrust. Another dread is specific though
to this Special Administrative Region of China: That is, that not
too far away from where they live -- more precisely, just across its border
with China proper -- are heinous criminals who will stop at nothing (including
selling their bodies, murdering young and old folk, then taking over other
people's identities) to help themselves and those they love.
Wu Chien-Lien is surprisingly convincing in INTRUDER
as the Mainland Chinese woman who slips into Hong Kong in the guise of
a prostitute who she met and killed in the border town of Shenzhen.
Following her successful acquisition of the official documents that identify
her as the long-haired streetwalker she had efficiently strangled (who
turns out to have a husband waiting for her in Hong Kong played by the
film's action director, Yuen Bun), she finds the type of man she specifically
sought: One who lives alone in a house seemingly in the middle of
nowhere, who appeared to neither care nor is cared for by anyone (This
unknowing victim is portrayed by Wayne Lai). After spending time
in -- and checking out -- his abode, she sets into motion her plan to get
what she wants from him by running over his legs one night with a rented
car and thereby rendering him physically less mobile than he previously
was.
All was going well for this seriously scary INTRUDER
-- whose real name is Yieh Siu Yan --until a typhoon (warning) delays the
arrival of her husband (Moses Chan is at least as menacing a presence in
this film as its lead actress) and also causes her victim's estranged mother
(Bonnie Wong plays this unfortunate being) to actually worry about the
welfare of her son so much that she decides to pay him a visit. Although
the older woman had decided not to bring along her granddaughter, rest
assured that the young girl does have a part to play in sending chills
to the bone of this movie's already amply frazzled by then viewers (One
has to wonder re the sanity of Laai Yuen Tung's parents to allow the admirably
spunky lass to have the role that she has in this work! Frankly,
in light of what happens to other children in Johnnie To's "The Heroic
Trio" and "Beyond Hypothermia"...).
Considering the significant amount of apprehension
and consternation summoned up by the actions of INTRUDER's villain(s),
it actually might come as a shock to realize that not that many individuals
get murdered in this work. Alternatively, it may well be precisely
the modest scale and methods of effecting -- and dealing with the aftermath
of -- what really are very violent events that can be truly frightening.
By this I mean that it may well be precisely such characteristics which
cause the viewer to reckon that it doesn't necessitate too much of an imaginative
leap to think that such could easily happen to her (or him). Such
unsettled sensibilities are hardly allayed by the movie's makers giving
the tension-filled work a "true crimes" feel and encouraging the audience
at film's end to think of how things could be worse -- or even just that
there probably will be a -- "next time"...
My rating for this film: 7.