Effraction

A pathetic American imitation of Kidnapped, one of the year’s best genre films. One large house, one family, a group of quarrelling kidnappers. I would really like to know whether Trespass didn’t cross the limit between inspiration and rip-off, because both films are incredibly similar at first sight. But then you do notice some differences, mainly that Joel Schumacher will no longer bother with anything other than average routine. Other than the unoriginal execution, what’s interesting is the ubiquitous stupidity of everyone (certainly the characters’, maybe the creators’), which kills any hope of at least average entertainment. By the end I was yawning. (24/10/2011)

A bunch of lunatics get together in a building. A fairly standard "hostage" film that turns out to be a showcase of Schumacher madness. Some of the twists are really incredible. (04/11/2011)

On paper, it might have looked nice as a proposal for an action B-movie. I won't explore what happened between the idea and the final product, but when I turned off the sound, I found some nice shots of Nicole and it went pretty well. I assume she took the role as a remembrance of working with Schumacher on Batman Forever, which didn't end particularly badly for her. (02/10/2014)

When I watch a film with a hackneyed subject (and the subject of Trespass is about as hackneyed as election promises), I wait to see what happens in it that is "different", what makes it different from its dozen or so older siblings. If such films don't differentiate themselves in any way, I'm usually disappointed. That's exactly what happened here. Trespass is cliché from start to finish, and it's not entertaining. There are countless twists and turns, but they are either predictable or unnecessary, one succeeding the other with machine-gun cadence... and the viewer is left with a mess. Joel Schumacher can obviously still do suspense, and Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman are good as the couple, it's just that when everything else is messing them up, then everything is bad. (25/06/2012)

The fatal finale to Joel Schumacher's wild career, and holder of the record for the fastest movie withdrawal from theaters of all time, when after 18 days and $25,000 earned (on a $25m budget) it was decided that it wasn't worth wasting electricity on the projector for this. In some ways that was good news, because Schumacher's creative fatigue was already terribly evident in the messiness of his last films, plus at least it proved that even the presence of two Oscar-deserving actors doesn't automatically fill theaters if the rest of them aren’t worth a penny. And like, truly not even. Watching a completely inept bunch of maniacs unable to arrange to get Cage's thumb on the vault sensor for half an hour, even though they have his wife as a hostage, is a pain. If you stop taking the impotent threatening seriously after ten minutes, partly due to a shotgun being reloaded menacingly about fifteen times, then what are you supposed to do in a home invasion movie? Admire the interiors? (15/02/2020)