Intruder (1997) was the directing debut of Kan-Cheung Tsang (and still is), who has and had written many films before and after Intruder, but this film shows he can direct, too. Intruder tells the story of mainland Chinese girl (Wu Chien-Lien ), who is, with her husband, a wanted criminal and they have to get to Hong Kong in order to stay alive and be free. She murders one girl and gets her ID and goes to Hong Kong and now she should get an ID for her husband, who is still in mainland and needs an ID, too. The girl has found a perfect victim (Wayne Lai) who lives alone in the woods and has not many friends and all she has to do is get his ID and that she WILL get by any means..What follows is a night of pure terror, depression and brutal and savage mayhem that won't leave the viewer alone even after the viewing.
Intruder is very intense and dark thriller and these are the elements, that make Run and Kill and The Untold Story so great and unmatchable classics in Hong Kong terror cinema. It rains all the time in Intruder and nothing seems too bright or optimistic, and this reminded me a little of David Fincher's Se7en. In Intruder, there is one positive character, a little girl, which brings some hope to the misery in the film. The cinematography and lightning are gorgeous and create very ominous moments and scenes. The editing is at times too fast and irritating, and I think they should have concentrated a little more on those edits and finish this in its perfect form. Now it looks like it was finished in horrible rush. Anyway, the overall atmosphere is so chilling and the film has many nasty surprises and memorable elements, it is easy for Hong Kong enthusiast to like this and this also ranks almost as high as those mentioned masterpieces of the genre.
There is a certain theme in this film and it is more than depressing and pessimistic. I think that those two murderers, wife and husband, can be seen as a dark side of humanity and of that cab driver (Wayne Lai) in particular, because we learn that there are many bad things this cab driver has done to others in past. And it really rains all the time and there is a definite feeling of pure evil present all the time, so I think that the murdering characters can be seen as Rutger Hauer's hitcher in The Hitcher by Robert Harmon: not necessarily a realistic character but something very wicked and bad that lurks more or less deep inside every human being. I love these kind of films, because usually they are so powerful that the result is something very special, and that is the case in Intruder, too. There is no necessarily a happy ending, because once the evil has been released, it is hard to keep it on the background and away..
There are, however, couple of usual faults in Intruder and they can be found a little too often in these films. The aforementioned unfinished looking editing is one fault, and the other is that there are too many "easy" conclusions in the story and characters seem to be able to do impossible things and those things have become cliches. There are no explanations for certain scenes that should have been explained in order to fully appreciate the film, but I think they are easy to forgive, because there are so many positive things in this film.
The violence and other stuff that gave Intruder CAT3 rating is pretty disturbing but it is also left to imagination and not on-screen all the time. But this doesn't mean Intruder is easy for everyone to watch, because the scenes are very very brutal and violent, and the overall tone is so dark and pessimistic. So this cannot be recommended to any other than Hong Kong extreme cinema enthusiasts, but it is no use in expecting this to be some kind of blood bath: the effects are not too plenty, and this is not some kind of splat fest. There is no nudity in this film, so the high 3 rating was earned due to the violence and brutality, both graphic and mental.
Intruder deserves 8/10 but it would have earned more, if only those mentioned little flaws were not there. Still, this is one of the finest examples of what these Orient film makers can create with the tools and magic of cinema. Intruder is again something that is very difficult to imagine coming out from some other country or Western film makers.
