Home Is Where the Plot Holes Are
There are haunted house movies that make you afraid to turn off the lights, and then there’s The Intruders — a movie that makes you afraid you’ll never get your time back. Directed by Adam Massey and written by Jason Juravic, this 2015 Canadian horror flick somehow manages to make Miranda Cosgrove, Tom Sizemore, and Austin Butler look like they’re performing in a high school film studies project about grief, drywall, and bad lighting.
It’s as if someone watched The Others, Disturbia, and an episode of iCarly, threw them in a blender, forgot to plug it in, and said, “Perfect, we’ve got a movie.”
The Plot (Or, A Thousand Yawns Beneath the Floorboards)
Rose Halshford (Miranda Cosgrove) moves into a creepy old house with her father Jerry (Donal Logue), an architect who’s apparently never met a well-lit room. Rose is still reeling from her schizophrenic mother’s suicide, which the movie reminds us of roughly every six minutes just in case we forget she has emotional depth.
Almost immediately, things start to “feel off.” The house creaks. Shadows flicker. The neighbor stares too long. Standard haunted house starter pack. Rose meets Leila, the quirky girl across the street, whose main role is to dump exposition like she’s getting paid per line of dialogue. Then there’s Leila’s father, Howard (Tom Sizemore), who alternates between “creepy neighbor” and “guy who looks like he just woke up in someone else’s movie.”
When local handyman Noah (Austin Butler) starts showing up unannounced, Rose becomes suspicious, though the real mystery is how Butler agreed to this script before his agent had a chance to intervene. As Rose investigates, she discovers clues about a missing woman named Rachel, a secret room, and a murderous man-child living in the walls — which somehow sounds way more exciting written down than it actually is.
By the time the killer reveals himself, you’ll wish he’d shown up sooner just to end the movie early.
Miranda Cosgrove: Haunted by the Ghost of Nickelodeon
Let’s be clear: Miranda Cosgrove tries. She really does. You can see the effort in every wide-eyed look of terror and every shaky whisper of, “Dad, something’s wrong with this house.” But the script gives her nothing to work with except clichés and architectural jargon.
Her Rose is supposed to be traumatized, intelligent, and suspicious, but mostly she just looks like someone who accidentally wandered into the wrong Airbnb. Cosgrove’s acting range is trapped somewhere between Scooby-Doosidekick and lost graduate student. It’s hard to blame her — the dialogue sounds like it was written by a haunted typewriter with a caffeine addiction.
This was clearly meant to be her “serious horror breakout” role, but instead, it feels like iCarly: Ghost Edition.
Donal Logue: The Dad Who Doesn’t Believe Anything
Donal Logue plays Jerry, the world’s most inattentive father and least convincing architect. His main contribution to the plot is dismissing every supernatural event with the emotional range of a man reading a parking ticket. “It’s all in your head, Rose,” he says, for the fifth time, as a bloodstained wall literally hums behind him.
Logue is usually a reliable actor, but here he looks like he’s doing community service. His energy screams, “I’ll be in the trailer if you need me,” and his facial expressions hover between “mild irritation” and “existential dread about his career choices.”
Austin Butler: From Wallpaper to Wallflower
Before Austin Butler was mumbling his way to an Oscar nomination as Elvis, he was here — sanding floorboards, staring dreamily, and existing solely as a red herring. His Noah is supposed to be mysterious and romantic, but he comes off more like a haunted Ken doll.
His chemistry with Cosgrove is about as electric as a damp toaster. Their scenes together have the tension of a polite grocery store interaction: “Hi.” “Hi.” “Do you like houses?” “Yes.” Cut to spooky piano music.
You can almost see Butler mentally calculating how many horror movies he has to do before Baz Luhrmann calls.
Tom Sizemore: Method Acting or Just Confused?
Tom Sizemore plays Howard, the suspicious neighbor who’s either a villain or just really bad at social interaction. Every line he delivers sounds like he’s asking the crew where craft services went.
To be fair, Sizemore has been in so many straight-to-DVD thrillers that he probably shot this one on autopilot between coffee breaks. He glares, grumbles, and pops up in doorways like a malfunctioning cuckoo clock. When the film tries to make him seem sinister, it’s hard not to laugh. If this man told you he was hiding a body, you’d assume he meant in the script he forgot to memorize.
The “Horror”
Let’s talk about the scares — or rather, the total absence of them. The Intruders has the visual flair of a tax audit and the suspense of a mildly concerning creak in your neighbor’s house.
Every supposed “scary” moment plays like a parody of a better film:
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Flickering lights? Check.
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Sudden jump cuts with ominous music? Check.
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Main character gasping at her own reflection? Check, check, check.
It’s as if the director thought the mere act of dimming a light bulb would make the audience scream. Instead, we yawned so loudly we scared the cat.
And when the “big reveal” finally comes—that there’s a deranged man hiding in the walls—it lands with all the impact of a lukewarm cup of tea.
The Dialogue: A Masterclass in Awkwardness
If you’ve ever wondered what it sounds like when human beings stop talking like human beings, look no further. Here’s a sample of the linguistic carnage:
“This house… it remembers things.”
“You just need to move on, Rose.”
“There’s something inside these walls!”
If clichés were currency, The Intruders could’ve funded The Conjuring 5.
The Direction: Haunted by Inertia
Adam Massey directs the film with the enthusiasm of a man reading IKEA instructions. Every shot feels obligatory, every scare predictable. He seems allergic to tension. When something should be terrifying, he cuts away. When something should be quiet and atmospheric, he drowns it in piano music that sounds like it was lifted from a public domain horror reel.
There’s no rhythm, no momentum, and certainly no imagination. It’s a movie that’s technically competent and spiritually vacant—like someone used film school as an exorcism.
The Ending: Ghosts of Missed Opportunities
By the end, Rose survives, her father lives, and the killer maybe, possibly, returns in the world’s most half-hearted jump scare. Marcus appears in the window for a split second, then vanishes behind a passing bus — the cinematic equivalent of “Boo! … Never mind.”
It’s meant to leave you questioning what’s real, but mostly it leaves you questioning why you didn’t just rewatch The Sixth Sense.
Final Verdict: The Only Thing Intruding Is the Boredom
The Intruders isn’t a bad movie in the entertaining way — it’s bad in the slow, suffocating way that drains your will to live. It takes a promising setup and turns it into a 90-minute slog of déjà vu and underacting.
The cast tries, the script fails, and the direction wanders aimlessly like a ghost that forgot its purpose. It’s not terrifying, it’s not thrilling, and it’s certainly not memorable.
In the end, The Intruders proves that the scariest thing about moving into an old house isn’t the ghosts — it’s finding out someone made a movie about it this dull.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)
The only thing haunting this film is its own mediocrity.
