'Invader' is Excellent and Deeply Unpleasant

Writer/director Mickey Keating's latest film is a feature-length anxiety attack.

As a horror fan, I’ve heard writer/director Mickey Keating’s name batted around a bunch over the past few years. But I hadn’t seen any of his work for myself until watching his latest offering, Invader. Having now experienced this film, I’m prepared to say that Keating is extremely talented, and that I may never view any of his movies again: Invader is excellent, but it’s also deeply, deeply unpleasant.

The movie stars Vero Maynez as Ana, who comes to a small, rural town to visit her cousin, Camila (Ruby Vallejo). But upon arriving, Ana can’t get ahold of Camila: her phone goes straight to voicemail, and she doesn’t answer the door when Ana knocks. Ana begins to suspect the worst, and enlists one of Camila’s co-workers, Carlo (Colin Huerta), to help her get to the bottom of things. It goes without saying that the answers Ana and Carlo find are anything but reassuring.

That’s a very meat-and-potatoes set-up, but Keating doesn’t require a flashier concept to make Invader nightmarishly unnerving. Right from the opening, he films Invader predominantly in too-tight close-ups that seem to have been shot by an operator who lacks the arm strength to hold the camera still; when he does cut to a long shot, it’s a very long shot, which makes Ana look small and emphasizes how alone she is. The sound design, meanwhile, is busy and loud, as though its whole purpose was to give the viewer a migraine. It’s safe to assume that Keating is trying to induce a panic attack in the viewer, and he’s doing a hell of a job at that: I spent the movie gripping the armrests of my chair with such force that I practically tore them open.

It would be difficult to sustain this level of intensity for an extended period without having the audience revolt, and Keating clearly understands that: Invader is just 70-minutes-long, and truth be told, I think it could still be ten minutes shorter. Much like last year’s When Evil Lurks, Invader is mercilessly grim - but it’s even harder to watch than When Evil Lurks, because the whole thing is successfully designed to be the cinematic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

If Invader isn’t as good as When Evil Lurks, that’s partially because it’s ultimately not as inventive, not as shocking, and not as meaningful or thought-provoking: there is some social subtext here (Ana and her family are Spanish-speaking, and the titular antagonist is played by indie stalwart Joe Swanberg, who is about as White as White gets), but he doesn’t push it nearly as far as he could have. A greater stab (yuk yuk) at profundity would have made Invader more intellectually stimulating and maybe even justified its extended finale, which at present could likely be cut from the movie without lessening the story’s overall power.

Still, Invader is impressive. The past fifty years have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of filmmakers inspired by classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween, but Keating is the rare one to actually understand what makes those movies great: there’s no kitchen sink psychology to explain the villain’s motives, no aggressive provocation just for its own sake, no dumb jump scares, and very little explicitly-graphic violence. Invader might very well be the movie Rob Zombie has been trying to make his whole career, except that Zombie doesn’t understand anything about his favorite movies beyond their grimy aesthetic, whereas Keating has an actual mastery of cinematic language. Part of what makes Invader so difficult to watch is that it feels real, and part of it is that Keating is willing to let the audience’s imagination do the heavy lifting. I can’t recommend enough that casual horror fans stay far away from this movie, and that hardcore horror fans check it out - so long as they have some Klonopin ready to steady their nerves once it’s over.