Intruders (Jo nan-ja-deul) (Young-Seok Noh 2013) South Korea

Reviewed by Linnea Nilsson at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2014

I rarely see horror movies nowadays since I never get scared of them. It may sound weird but I have always wished that I someday will find a horror movie that will scare me so much that I’m scared for weeks. Hearing that Asians are very good at this particular genre, I now had a chance at the festival to actually see one: Intruders. Even though it said it was a comedy/horror/thriller, I hoped that I would at least be a little bit scared.

Intruders is about a young writer that travels to a cabin far away out in the woods to write the final pages of his script. He is all by himself, but his writing gets interrupted as three guys and one girl ask him if they could stay the night so they could go skiing. Even though he has his doubts, he says yes. That same night, when he walks outside, he notice that it’s quiet outside. Too quiet. The others were just outside drinking beer together, but now they are gone. Going back to the cabin, he finds one of the guy lying on his porch, dead. He has to find out what is going on, but it’s only going to get worse as he comes across a friendly ex-con “neighbor” and a cop that ties him up, suspicious of his actions. He desperately tries to explain what has happened, even putting the blame on the ex-con, but the cop doesn’t believe him. But they will soon discover something horrible that will change their mind.

I’m not really sure if I liked this movie or not. First of all I can say that the only thing that made this movie scary was the music. But in some scenes, the music just made it worse because it was never anything scary about them. Sure, some of the scenes were more thrilling than others, but scary? No. I think that the music just made me think that something was about to happen and then nothing really happened. Some scenes were just quite, making me even more nervous that something would happen. But it didn’t.

The thing that kind of ruined it for me was the rhythm of the movie. They had really long scenes, that didn’t have so much happening within the frame, from the beginning until about two thirds of the movie. So I was just sitting there, hoping something scary would happen soon, but that was never the case. It was more thrilling after those two thirds, but then it felt a little bit too late. The long scenes weren’t boring, though, since I sat there looking on every inch of the frame if I could catch something suspicious. But most of the times, there was nothing special to see. The dialog was funny, which is maybe the reason why they call it a comedy. Otherwise, I don’t really understand why they would ever call it a comedy. I think it was more thriller than any of the other genres. The ending wasn’t good either, it didn’t really make sense, so I actually left the theatre a little bit disappointed.

I don’t think I would watch this movie again, nor will I recommend it. I thought it was going to be better and more scary, but maybe I should learn that often when you have high expectations you’re usually going to get disappointed.