I was doing some research on plot twists in movies and the majority of the lists feature movies that have plot twists that occur at the end. I won’t list them all, but films like The Sixth Sense, Psycho, and Sleepaway Camp are a few examples of films where the surprise comes so late, it makes the viewer reconsider everything that happened before it (and maybe even inspire a re-watch of the film to look for missed clues). In director Adam Schindler‘s new thriller, Intruders, the twist doesn’t want a re-watch, it wants the viewer’s attention as soon as possible, occurring early in the film.

Beth Riesgraf plays Anna, a 20-something young woman living with, and caring for, her sick brother, Conrad (Timothy T. McKinney). Anna is trapped in her own home by acute agoraphobia. But one of the few other people she has contact with is the young man (Rory Culkin) who delivers daily prepared meals to the parentless siblings. When her brother dies, Anna inherits a considerable sum of money, left to her entirely in cash. A trio of thugs (Jack Kesy, Joshua Mikel, and Martin Starr) catch wind of this windfall and attempt to break into the home. But they didn’t account for her agoraphobia keeping her home. While the thieves turn the house upside-down looking for the cash, Anna turns the tables on them and the terrorizers become the terrified.

Early on, Intruders looks as if it’s going to be just another home invasion thriller. After the set-up leaves the protagonist physically trapped (by agoraphobia) and emotionally vulnerable (sad because of her brother’s death), she spends the better part of the rest of the film trying to outwit her attackers while overcoming her own personal issues. It’s pretty comparable to Panic Room in that way.

To get to the twist, one must first tolerate the clichéd first act (although, to be fair, that cliché helps make the twist all the more twisted). It starts out well, but once the dimensionally bereft bad guys appear (the Alpha Male, his weaker brother, and the sadist), Schindler’s direction becomes more of a stale paint-by-numbers. Still, the early going has its bright spots, led by veteran Riesgraf, who gives a terrific performance as the grieving sister and trapped agoraphobe. Another veteran—from the other side of the camera—is set decorator John Gathright, whose eye for detail allows Anna’s house to say a lot about her fragile psyche.

Then the twist happens.

I’ll issue the Spoiler Alert now, since the twist is its selling point. Without it, the film is just another home invasion thriller. In fact, not only does the twist happen early in Intruders, it’s sold about halfway through the trailer as the reason to see the film in the first place. You have now been warned.

The twist is that the basement of Anna’s house is something of an underground prison and torture chamber. It’s complete with retracting stairs to trap people in the basement, an assortment of instruments designed to deliver pain, and a few other unsettling things best not mentioned here. Anna knows her way around all these things, giving her something of a Jekyll/Hyde persona, only softly sinister. It’s a delicious twist, offering the viewer everything from the refreshing sight of a power struggle shifting to the woman’s favor (instead of the man’s), to the relief that the film is not just another home invasion thriller. Riesgraf revs up her performance here, turning out her character’s lifetime of psychological oppression into a measured burn.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is once the twist happens and the viewer’s excitement is ignited about the endless possibilities these turned tables offer. Intruders quickly disintegrates and exposes itself as having no real possibilities. The drop-off is jarring. Once the trio of intruders (and that delivery boy, too) are in the basement, what more is there to do other than have the woman terrorize the men? Once that trick is played the first time, the film can only manage to limp along as home invasion thriller-turned-torture horror. The only maintaining interest is wanting to know why this frightful basement exists. It’s explained, and quite satisfactorily. But that explanation should be the reward; instead, it’s the consolation prize.

Hollywood is a town full of bad ideas. So when a great one comes along but is poorly executed, it’s more than an opportunity missed, it’s an opportunity wasted. With Intruders (previously titled Shut In), director Schindler and screenwriters T.J. Cimfel and David White prove to be another in a long line of filmmakers guilty of being so enamored by the originality of their twist, they simply let that twist try to carry them instead of building a strong showcase around it.

Lou Howe’s Gabriel will be making its world premiere at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival this week. The film stars Rory Culkin as a troubled man who is determined to reunite with his first love, risking everything in the quest.

We now have a clip from the film that showcases the unpredictability of the character. Watch the clip below to get freaked out by Culkin playing an impressively dark character.

First Clip of Gabriel

You might have seen movies about teenage pregnancy before, but you’ve never seen them done like this. In a refreshing take on the topic, Rebecca Thomas’ debut Electrick Children gives us a story of immaculate conception that is easy to love and wonderfully unique. Though it begins in a religious community, whether the pregnancy in question truly was immaculate conception or not is inconsequential; in a world of heightened possibility, we’re asked to suspend our disbelief in a far more uplifting manner than usual.

The film begins in a conservative Mormon colony in Utah, where 15 year old Rachel (Julia Garner) is interviewed about her faith by her pastor and father (Billy Zane). Rachel, who has never seen a tape recorder before, sneaks into the basement that night and finds herself listening to a blue tape, with a cover of The Nerves’ hit song “Hanging on the Telephone” recorded on it. The next thing we know, Rachel’s pregnant, and convinced that it was immaculate conception – that the holy spirit came to her through the man’s voice on the tape. Her mother, who caught Rachel and her brother Mr. Will (Liam Aiken) grappling over the tape on the floor that night, is not convinced, instead believing that Mr. Will forced himself on his sister. Mr. Will is exiled from the community, and an arranged marriage is organised for Rachel; but the young girl with a rebellious streak is convinced of her innocence and drives off in the night in hopes of finding the man on the tape, not realising that Mr. Will is asleep in the back of the truck.

And so, with her wide, curious eyes, we come to meet Las Vegas as though for the first time. A land of promise and electric paradise, it’s everything Rachel needs and more as she encounters a young group of skating stoner musicians, believing one of them to be the man on the tape. The contrast between her hometown in Utah, shot in nostalgic desaturated colour, and Vegas, with its neon lights and enchanting atmosphere, only serves to highlight the beauty of both, rather than display one as better than the other—and this consistent refusal to take the easy route of cutting down fundamentalist faith is what makes Thomas stand out even more as a director. There are plenty of comedic moments, as one would expect when two young traditionalist children are suddenly faced with the wasted youth of Sin City, but this humour never comes at the expense of Mormon culture.

As the story progresses, things do seem to be rather convenient, with one particular revelation seeming a little too felicitous for us to openly accept it, as the characters do. Though all of the characters are believable, they exist somewhere out of our reach, in a world of fantasy and exhilaration. Nevertheless, Rachel’s naivete is surprisingly believable, thanks both to her unwavering faith and to Julia Garner’s amazing performance. Garner is always naive without being stupid, and her big eyes and innocent face are more than perfect for the endless curiosity she portrays. The supporting cast are also fantastic, with a convincing Aiken as a boy newly discovering the pleasures of the world, and Rory Culkin’s surprisingly endearing performance as a forlorn runaway. With the intimate development of these characters and such genuinely unexpected turns throughout, it’s not hard for us to forgive any failures to fully reach its potential.

There have been many comparisons of this film to the 2011 drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, but though both films deal with fundamentalist religious communities in a way, the similarities end there. Electrick Children is far less condemning of such societies, instead rising above judgement to provide us with a film that is simply a tale of adolescent discovery wrapped in the warm glow of innocence. It lifts us up beyond issues of virtue and honour, into a sun-kissed kingdom so genuine it’s hard for us to be cynical. The story of a child growing up, it allows us to leave behind our own adulthood and the pessimism that comes with it, if only for a moment. Rachel tells us, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” But if I had to sum up this film in one word, that word would not be God, but beauty.

Electrick Children trailer:

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011 was Hick, a film directed by Derick Martini about a teenager who aimlessly drifts away from her Nebraska home. Aimlessly drifts are a common theme here because the entire film seems to follow the main characters lead. The film tried to be bizarre and off-beat but ultimately it felt more contrived than anything.

One of the first scenes in Hick is Luli McMullen (Chloe Grace Moretz) having her thirteen year old birthday party at a crappy dive bar in Nebraska. One of the birthday gifts she opens up happens to be a .45 Smith & Wesson. Afterwards her mother and father both drunkenly fight over who is driving her home but both are too drunk to do so. Instead, she gets a ride from a person who works at the bar. That is how this family operates in a nutshell.

The next morning her mother leaves with a real estate agent with Luli witnessing. After telling her father the news, he seems more upset than surprised. After he finishes his breakfast also abandons her. On a whim she gets the idea of going to Las Vegas for no other reason but there is sugar daddy potential there. And that is how the adventure starts and we have little choice to accept this as the plot.

Luli manages to find a ride from a young gentleman named Eddie Kreezer (Eddie Redmayne) but it is not long before she manages to upset him enough to kick her out. After finding shelter to sleep underneath a bridge she is awakened by a woman who pulled over from the highway to urinate, nearly on her. Somehow she convinces the woman to give her a ride.

The woman’s name is Glenda (Blake Lively) who seems to be exactly like Luli in 30 years. Within the first few minutes of meeting each other Glenda offers cocaine to Luli. Her thought process is that Luli will probably doing it with her friends sometime soon anyways so why not let her try it now.

The two stop at a convenience store and form a plan to rob it. Both feeding of each other’s similar personalities, they are a dangerous combination. If there were related they would be a twisted mother and daughter version of Bonnie and Clyde.

It turns out that Eddie, who first picked Luli up for a ride, knows Glenda. Glenda is in some sort of relationship with Eddie’s boss and for no good reason Eddie is put in charge of looking after Luli. Eddie seems to have a sexual connection with Luli that soon becomes dangerous.

I have little doubt that the novel this film was adapted for would be more intriguing then it’s film counterpart. This is one of those cases where the book most likely did not translate well to film, although I have to speculate because I have not read the novel. I felt like the characters in Hick were not developed well enough as they could have and the film only skimmed the subject matters they encounter.

The best part about the film is the performance by Chloe Grace Moretz. She is a fearless teenager who waves guns around like they are nothing and snorts coke when given the chance. She has played in roles ranging from Kick-Ass to Let Me In to Hugo but probably never has had as much on-screen face time as this. When most of the other actors seem to overplay their characters she was the least offender.

What annoyed me the most is when Luli suddenly shows that she does have normal human emotions when she for some reason is mad when Glenda leaves her. She did not seem to bat an eye when her mother did the same thing at the beginning. Now granted, her mother did not seem to care much for her so maybe she saw Glenda as a role model to look up to. But why? Maybe she wanted to believe Glenda was a better person than she really was. Again, lack of character development.

There is more than one scene that will leave you scratching your head. I appreciated the strangeness that was found in the scenes but so many of them felt forced. They really did not seem to fit in or were not needed at all.

To use the film’s own words, Hick is not “worth of note”. The big problem is the film never hooks the viewer in from the beginning. So the story arc never seemed to peak because it never really began. The underdeveloped characters make it nearly impossible to sympathize with them, making you wonder what the film was trying to accomplish.