Home invasion plot more exhausting than suspenseful
Nothing brings a horribly dysfunctional family together better than a good, old-fashioned home invasion.
Somewhere in Joel Schumacher's twitchy, jumpy thriller "Trespass" might be a moral about why it's not a good idea to live on credit, but any economic subtext gets crushed under an avalanche of confusing and annoying flashbacks, unsubtle foreshadowings, cheesy digital fire effects, and corny dialogue that could be lifted from a dozen other home invasion movies on cable.
When we meet the Millers, they seem normal enough, for a family that lives in a kajillion-dollar mansion on a lot the size of Rhode Island with a security system rivaling Fort Knox.
Kyle Miller (Nicolas Cage in frumpy, middle-aged dad mode) wheels and deals in diamonds. His alluring wife Sarah (Nicole Kidman) feels neglected and pours her energies into redesigning their already over-designed mansion.
Their rebellious teen daughter Avery (Liana Liberato) wants to escape from her parents by going to a raucous party, but Mom won't let her. Neither will Dad, once he knows what Mom thinks.
So, angry Avery sneaks out of the house to go partying.
Then, sheriff's police arrive at the Miller's gate and want to tell him about a rash of robberies in the neighborhood.
Without seeing their faces on the security cameras, or even asking for their IDs, Kyle lets them in the front door.
Bad move.
In come four masked intruders and they know all about Kyle and his business and his family. They demand the $200,000 in diamonds they know are inside his home safe. They threaten to kill Sarah if he doesn't open it.
What happens next appears to be a bold move by Kyle, although later, we understand his real motive. He refuses to open the safe, reasoning that the moment the invaders get what they want, he and Sarah will be killed.
But the plot coagulates. Kyle doesn't know that one of the masked baddies, Jonah (Cam Gigandet), has been crushing on Sarah ever since he met her through his day job as a security installation expert for the Miller home.
So when the enforcer of the group, ruthless Ty (Dash Mihok), tries to molest Sarah, Jonah screeches, "<I>Hurt her and I will kill you! Do you understand?"
</I>Everyone is surprised, especially Jonah's brother Elias (Ben Mendelsohn) the presumed leader of the pack and the head of his own dysfunctional family.
Not only is bro Jonah refusing to take his meds for his psychotic episodes, Elias' tattooed girlfriend Petal (Jordana Spiro), the fourth home invader, is strung out on drugs, given to severe paranoia and jitters - yet, Elias <I>gives her a gun to wave.
</I>Home invasion movies ("Straw Dogs," "The Desperate Hours," "The Strangers") tap into our primal fears that our safest sanctuaries - our homes - can be violated and that we are totally powerless against the invaders.
How the victims respond to the invasion creates the drama here, and Karl Gajdusek stuffs his screenplay with a flurry of mini-chases, reversals and flashbacks designed to mislead us until the truth comes out.
Schumacher, who directed the ill-conceived "Batman and Robin" and other movies, is out of his genre element here. He resorts to jumbled camera angles and quick-pan edits to communicate the trauma of the Millers.
But the effect is less scary and suspenseful than it is simply exhausting.
<b>“Trespass”</b>
★ ½
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Liana Liberato, Cam Gigandet
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Other: A Millennium Entertainment release. Rated R for drug use, language, violence. 85 minutes