Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Home Invasion

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Home Invasion.

Home invaders come in all shapes and sizes…

 

Some of them break in to steal your shit…

Some of them break in to torture you for fun…

Some of them break in to hide from something…

 

But in the very best films from this sub-genre…

 

Some of them break in…

 

And get the surprise of their lives.

 

 

Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most surprising, and most original, Home Invasion Movies that you may not have seen…But should.

 

Them (2006) – This is yet another outstanding French horror film…It tells the tale of a French couple Lucas and Clementine who’ve recently moved into a sprawling country home in Romania…What this film lacks in gore, it makes up for with dread, tension and scares…This couple is relentlessly tormented, and we keep hoping that they will find some way out of this mess, that they have no reason for being in…The big head-spin comes not only when we realize who the tormentors actually are…But when you remember that you were told in the opening scene that this whole sordid mess is based on a true story.

Vacancy (2007) – Ever wanted to be secretly part of the filming of a snuff film? Nope…Me neither. And neither did Amy and David when they booked a room at what could easily be the worst motel since Norman Bates closed his doors…Hell, I’d rather curl up next to a bed bug, on a chalk outline of last night’s murder victim, with an overhead blacklight to point out all the various bodily fluid release locations, than spend the night at the Pinewood Motel…Once the unwilling participants discover what they’ve stumbled upon, it becomes a non-stop cavalcade of holy shit moments leading up to the intense final act.

 

Inside (2007) – Here’s another French horror film…My all-time favorite, in fact…And since it is the absolute most surprising, most original home invasion film that I have ever seen, there was no way it wouldn’t be included…It contains the unbridled brutality that I’ve now become accustomed to when watching French horror…They do not shrink away from the gore…They do not shrink away from the blood…And they definitely do not shrink away from the longstanding unexplored territories of this or any other horror sub-genre…Now I’ve been watching horror films and loving it for almost four decades, and let me tell you that during this one, I was a sniveling pillow-biter.

Martyrs (2008) – What?…Another French film?…Yep…And this one is sort of a classic. It’s already been re-made here in the states, albeit poorly, so skip the American version and dive right into the French horror classic…The film opens with a young girl named Lucie escaping torture at a young age…She is sent to an orphanage, where she makes a friend so loyal, that she’d be willing to do anything for her…Flash forward to when the young girls are grown, Lucie and her friend Anna are breaking into a home that Lucie believes is the home of one of her torturers…Seems normal enough, right…Straight up revenge-flick, right…But wait, it’s only like twenty minutes into the film…Yep, you’re right…This is not the climax…It’s just the beginning.

Last House on the Left (2009) – A remake? Come on, man!…Hey easy…Lighten up. Be aware that this remake was not something that Wes Craven the director of the original eventually got behind…No, this was a film that he actually sanctioned, and produced…He always wanted to see what his story would’ve looked like with a substantial budget, and was quite pleased with the end result. The scenes that were deemed too brutal in 1972, were surprisingly still too brutal in 2009, as some critics, and audience members bailed out of the theater during the brutality…At it’s core, it is still what it was…A film that shows what we as humans are capable of…And that the lines between what makes someone a good guy or a bad guy get blurred by circumstance.

 

The Collector (2009) – Such a surprising treat this film was…We got a guy who is going to pull off a heist…Easy-Peasy…Just bop into the house that he’s doing some handy-man work in, crack the safe, snatch the rock, and be on his way…What could possibly go wrong? I mean what’s the worse that could happen? I don’t know…Let me see…A crazed serial killer could set deadly traps for the family that lives there…And he could end up catching you instead…Yep, I actually think that might be the worst that could happen.

 

You’re Next (2013) Adam Wingard, the director who brought us my favorite film of 2014, The Guest, directed this really inventive, smart and brutal home invasion film…The surprises come quick, and keep coming as turnabout becomes fairplay…I’ve recommended this one before, and probably will again…Deal with it.

 

The Perfect Host (2014) – David Hyde Pierce was utterly brilliant in this home invasion flick that keeps transforming with each passing scene…The metamorphosis that takes place is so unique, so fresh, that after years of movies made in this sub-genre, they still found countless ways to surprise me.

 

Knock Knock (2014) Eli Roth, the man behind Cabin Fever, Hostel, and The Green Inferno, stepped away from the gore and splatter that have peppered the walls of his films, to go all straight-up psychological thriller on us…Keanu Reeves plays Evan, a really nice guy who ends up getting screwed…In more ways than one. Roth takes a lot of criticism for this one, and in my opinion a wee bit on the harsh side…Is Knock Knock the best film of 2014? No, I already told you it was The Guest…But was it an original concept? Hell yes…Was it well-executed by both the filmmaker and the actors? Hell yes…Nuff said.

 

Intruders (2015) – Kind of in the vein of The Collector, this film has a bunch of home invaders looking to loot the home of a generous shut-in…When they arrive and find that the agarophobic owner is still there instead of at her brothers funeral, they get the surprise of their shortened lives. There are so many of the home invasion flicks that you watch and sort of hope they turn into a revenge flick…Well, this one takes it to such an amazingly dark and twisted level, that it’s like okay….Easy, now…Maybe that’s enough…Oh, okay…Maybe not.