Intruders - review - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Intruders - review

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The bogeyman in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's nightmarish horror film is called Hollowface. He terrifies two children at night. One is a small boy in Spain, the other an 11-year-old girl in a London suburb. They don't know each other but they each insist Hollowface is coming to get them even though their parents tell them he's just a dream.

The film is partly in Spanish and partly in English, with Clive Owen as the girl's anxious father. "You know Hollowface doesn't exist," he says. "Yes," says his daughter, "but he thinks he does!" There's no effective answer to that.

Izán Corchero and Ella Purnell play the children naturally, and in telling his parallel tales Fresnadillo creates and sustains a vaguely threatening atmosphere. His story, however, doubles back on itself too often and it's only at the end that it develops its real kick.

Owen's anxious father is a sturdy performance and there are good cameos from Kerry Fox and the great Spanish veteran Héctor Alterio. But the film, though well made and acted, hasn't the power of something like The Others.

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