There is no mistaking that Charlie is a lunatic, whose obsession over his home is taken to extreme levels. Taylor and Loughery don’t try to subvert the tropes of this kind of thriller. Scott’s growing suspicion of Charlie juxtaposed with Annie’s willingness to trust Charlie make for the central point of tension in The Intruder. For a guy who decided to sell his home, he doesn’t seem all that enthusiastic to leave it behind.

One time he offers to cut the grass, then he brings over food to share – soon he’s coming over for Thanksgiving dinner and offering to help Annie put up Christmas lights. Charlie says that he plans to move to Florida to stay with his daughter, but strangely enough, he keeps showing up at the house unannounced. That’s our first sign of trouble, isn’t it? Instead of buying the home through a real estate agency or some other legal third party, Scott and Annie decide to negotiate with Charlie directly. It’s a beautiful plot of land, and the owner of the home Charlie (Quaid) is all too eager to sell it to them. The house is everything they wanted: it’s one of those old, lived in homes where vines have grown up and down the side of the house and the driveway includes a long stretch of road lined by large trees. They find a nice, cozy home nestled in a wooded area in Napa Valley, CA. Scott ( Michael Ealy) and Annie ( Meagan Good) are a young, married couple looking to move to the countryside to start a family. It’s as though director Deon Taylor and writer David Loughery simply provided Quaid a stage to do whatever the hell he wanted, and because of that his performance is a collection of weird facial tics, creepy rage, and absolute hilarity. Quaid takes this idea and runs with it with unrelenting joy. A lot of the time the good guy has to play the straight counterpoint to the villain’s hijinks.

It’s been said that the antagonist is sometimes more interesting than the hero, and because of that actors tend to play their characters far looser and with more creativity. Dennis Quaid is having a ball playing the villain of The Intruder (2019).

The intruder movie