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ICYMI: 'INVADER' Dives into the Chaos of Domestic Invasion
'INVADER' Dives into the Chaos of Domestic Invasion
“A home invasion occurs every 30 seconds in America.”
So opens Mickey Keating’s latest, which just landed on Shudder this month. Keating has proven to be one of my favorite creators working in horror over the last several years, thanks in no small part to his twisting narratives that often leave more questions than answers in their wake and his staunch dedication to no explaining plot. Naturally, this also solidifies him as not quite being to everyone’s taste. Imagine my surprise to find INVADER his most grounded and straightforward work to date. So much so, in fact, it felt almost discordant with his other films. DARLING—which still holds pride of place in my personal Letterboxd top four—is a visually disorienting, REPULSION-esque descent into one woman’s madness that delights in hinting at its supernatural undertones but stubbornly refusing explanation. Its sister-work OFFSEASON is Keating’s delightful crack at Lovecraftian nautical and familial horror.
Was one of my resident auteurs of chaos turning over a new leaf?
But no.
At first blush, INVADER is a mostly straight-on home invasion horror. But, as usual, there is more going on than it appears. It becomes clear almost immediately that, while he may be turned away from the supernatural for now, there is no shortage of chaos. Rather, INVADER is much more interested in human evil, whether random or direct. Keating has no interest in the usual approach to invasion movies of building suspense to create tension, opting instead to throw viewers headlong into the events. The film more or less opens with the titular Invader (Joe Swanberg) laying waste to the inside of a nondescript home. It’s clear he’s broken in, but not whether anyone is home. While inside, we’re not even sure what time of day it is. The emphasis here is on destruction for destruction’s sake and clear demonstration of lack of humanity.
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INVADER alternates perspectives at certain points of the film between the Invader and Ana (Vero Maynez), a young Latinx woman en route to visit her cousin in Chicago. For the bulk of the taut 63-minute run time, we follow Ana as she makes her way toward her cousin’s house, increasingly frantic when her texts and calls go unanswered. In fact, no one is answering her. As the hours pass, Ana is increasingly more certain that something has happened to her cousin Camilla. She even tries going to Camilla’s work to see if anyone has heard from her there, only to have her concerns dismissed by Camilla’s boss. In a flippant display of casual cruelty, he tells Ana—amid berating another employee—that Camilla will get her last check for not showing up today.
It would be easy, in the current climate, to read INVADER as a dig into the dynamics of white men enacting varying levels of power fantasies over people of color. Everyone Ana encounters in the film is either a fellow Spanish-speaker or a white man, after all, and she more often than not feels terrorized by the latter. Carlo (Colin Huerta), the berated employee from the store and by all appearances someone we are meant to connect as Camilla’s partner, is in fact the only person not only to believe Ana, but to help her discover what is really going on.
For all this, the opening and closing chunks of the film are most interested in following the Invader, his actions, and their consequences. It begins and ends with him, effectively throwing Ana and her family back into the realm of anonymity. It isn’t important to him who any of these people are, only that he can continue his reign of terror.
Not everything about INVADER works quite as well as it could, and as is his trend, it will not work for everyone. Nevertheless, Keating’s crack at home invasion horror works to deliver his usual dose of anxiety—just maybe not in quite the same way or place we have come to expect. Whether he works for you or not, this unique approach to the genre is still worth at least one shot on your seasonal lists. I’ll still be posted up for the next Mickey Keating.
INVADER is now streaming on Shudder.
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