[rating=7.00]
Oftentimes, the term B-movie, or its counterpart term, grindhouse, can vary between overly wrought horror or aggressively retrofitted to harken back to the days of worn-out film stock and yellowed projection screens.
Trespassers, which is available on demand today via IFC Films, manages to skillfully execute a standard home invasion horror film, and does so because it relies on the most rote tropes of the genre as opposed to trying to subvert them. Right down to the setup, two couples meet up at a vacation rental, things steadily get weirder, messier, and more blood-splattered as the night goes on.
It’s pretty standard stuff, but just because you can anticipate (more or less) what’s going to happen throughout Corey Deshon’s script, director Orson Oblowitz seems to revel in a kind of stark minimalism, both with the sparsely decorated rental house, and the larger desert climate that envelopes it.
This minimalist approach also sparingly, but efficiently, doles out the backstories to the pair of couples at the center. Sarah (Angela Trimbur) and Joseph (Zach Avery) are recovering from a recent medical tragedy, but coping with it in vastly different ways. Sarah’s best friend, Estelle (Janel Parrish) are looking forward to reconnect, but her new boyfriend, Victor (Jonathan Howard) is an insufferable dick, whose obnoxious behavior practically screams ‘HE WILL DIE FIRST.’
(Spoiler alert: he does.)
The quartet’s awkward socializing is made worse by a cornucopia of drugs and alcohol, but don’t really start getting weird until a woman (Fairuza Balk) shows up claiming car trouble. While Balk’s distinct wolf-eyed gaze is hidden behind a pair of Janine Melnitz glasses, there’s a sinister undercurrent to her demeanor.
What unfolds is a run-of-the-mill affair, but remains compelling thanks partly to its unapologetic flaunting of its style. Oblowitz seems to know he isn’t re-inventing the wheel, allowing him to embellish in the most predictable twists and turns of the classic friends-in-danger scenario.
Additionally, Trimbur portrays the emotionally wounded Sarah with a very deliberate restraint, making her turn as the film’s final girl as compelling, if not a little expected. It’s also a 180 from her performance in the 2015 meta-slasher The Final Girl, where she played the hyper-manic Tina.
Still, by the time the credits role, it’s clear that Trespassers is a skillfully told, stylishly hyper-aware without ever veering anywhere near meta territory itself.
Trespassers is currently in limited theatrical release, or available on demand from IFC.
