Casey Chong with the essential home invasion horror movies…
Home is a sanctuary. But imagine the fear and the uncomfortable feeling when someone breaking and entering your home no matter if you live alone or with your loved one(s). The home invasion horror/thriller has been a recurring favourite for many filmmakers to explore the genre creatively, often resulting in a thrilling game of cat and mouse. The one-two punch of The Strangers duology including the riveting 2008 original and the underrated 2018 sequel deserved their places as among the best home invasion horrors in the recent years.
Now, The Strangers is back with not one but an ambitious trilogy dropping in a single year. Renny Harlin, who is no stranger to directing horror genre with movies like Prison and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, in charge of all three new Strangers movies. With The Strangers: Chapter 1 out now [read our review here], here are the 10 essential home invasion horror movies in alphabetical order…
Don’t Breathe (2016)
Fede Alvarez, who broke out with the blood-soaked Evil Dead remake, offers a unique take on the conventional home invasion genre. Three small-time thieves played by Jane Levy, Dylan Minette and Daniel Zovatto break into a rich man’s (Stephen Lang) house. The man happens to be blind, making it an easy task for them to pull off the heist. Or so they thought because the blind man turns out to be more capable than they imagined.
The result is a tense thriller with Alvarez making good use of the blind man’s two-storey house as a claustrophobic maze of thrills and suspense. His technical proficiency elevates the movie with some notable set pieces including the fluid one-take scene of the thieves scoping the house after the break-in. But the movie’s most memorable moment takes place in the dark basement as the blind man switches off the light and prowls on the terrified thieves with the effective use of Pedro Luque’s night-vision cinematography.
Don’t Breathe also benefits from its brisk 88-minute runtime and despite the distasteful late-in-the-game twist along with the unnecessary open ending, making way for the erratic 2021 sequel, this movie remains a gripping cinematic experience.
Funny Games (1997 & 2007)
It’s not every day that we get a shot-for-shot remake as good as the original. Funny Games is one of them, both of which directed by Michael Haneke. The English-language 2007 remake of the 1997 Austrian original boasts a recognisable cast (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) and better production value, notably Darius Khondji’s crisp cinematography. Haneke’s screenplay remains the same and he made the right choice not to dumb down to make it more accessible.
The remake is as dark as the original itself with Haneke’s clinical take on the familiar home-invasion horror genre follows Ann (Naomi Watts, playing the role originated by Susanne Lothar) and George (Tim Roth in Ulrich Mühe’s role) along with their son Georgie and family dog, Lucky vacationing at their picturesque lake house. It all started when two young men dressed in all-white, Paul (Michael Pitt in Arno Frisch’s role) and Peter (Brady Corbet in Frank Giering’s role) asking them nicely for some eggs. Things get unexpectedly ugly when the two starts hurting the family, holding them hostage and even force them to participate in a series of sadistic games.
There is no valid reason, motivation or a backstory about Paul and Peter, who enjoy manipulating and torturing them to their hearts’ contents. They take their sweet time doing so, matching with Haneke’s deliberate direction that evokes a sense of slow-burning dread. The two’s ambiguous nature made them more disturbing as they commit random acts of violence and it helps with Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet nail their respective creepy roles. Despite the nature of the movie, Haneke keeps most of the violence off-screen as he approaches his movie in a more psychological and suggestive manner.
Like the original, he has a field day catching us (the viewers) off guard with the abrupt use of breaking-the-fourth-wall moments, giving the movie an unexpectedly satirical edge meant to “toy” with us and suggesting the antagonists, particularly Paul is in complete control of the “games”.
Hush (2016)
Once in a while, there’s a gem waiting to be unearthed within a pile of forgettable and throwaway Netflix originals. One of them worth mentioning here is Mike Flanagan’s Hush, a compact little home-invasion horror boasting a simple but effective story. Kate Siegel plays Maddie, a horror author who lives alone deep in the woods with her white cat. “Alone” would be a stretch because there’s a masked killer with a crossbow appearing outside her remote home and begins stalking her.
Interestingly, Kate Siegel’s Maddie turns out to be a deaf-mute character and her disabilities give Flanagan – who also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Siegel herself – the upper hand to explore her character’s advantages and disadvantages. She may seem helpless since she can’t scream for help or call the police. But she also has experience writing horror novels, allowing her to make use of her creativity to outsmart the masked killer.
The movie benefits from a lean pace that doesn’t waste time setting up the story while Kate Siegel delivers an engaging performance as the resourceful Maddie. The killer’s identity remains ambiguous, which gives the antagonist character a scary and fearsome edge. Flanagan also deserves praise for his genre know-how direction in elevating claustrophobic thrills and suspense within the confines of a remote house.
Inside (2007)
Certainly not for the squeamish, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s directorial debut Inside doesn’t shy away from extreme gore and blood. And I mean, lots and lots of blood, all practically done without relying on the CGI fakery. The movie begins with the aftermath of a horrible car accident as the pregnant Sarah (Alysson Paradis) miraculously survived but her husband was killed on the spot. She has since suffering from depression and prefers to spend time at home until a mysterious woman (Béatrice Dalle) comes knocking the door. Long story short, the woman eventually invaded her home, arming with a pair of scissors and starts terrorising Sarah for a reason that reveals later in the movie.
Clocking at just 82 minutes, the movie is uncompromisingly bleak and savage from the moment Béatrice Dalle’s mysterious woman character trespasses Sarah’s home. The blood-soaking, violent nature just keeps on coming and never let up until the stomach-churning finale, both literally and figuratively.
Panic Room (2002)
David Fincher’s technical ingenuity and stylish direction are put into good use in Panic Room, starring Jodie Foster as the divorcee Meg Altman and her 11-year-old daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart) who move into a new home. One night, three intruders (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker and Dwight Yoakam) invade their home as they plan to steal the hidden millions inside the titular panic room.
Right from the Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest-inspired opening credits, Fincher pays excellent homage to the late master of suspense and his camerawork finds inventive ways to make the otherwise typical home-invasion genre more visually captivating. Working from David Koepp’s screenplay, Fincher keeps the pace taut with enough thrills and suspense to sustain its nearly 2-hour runtime. Conrad W. Hall and Darius Khondji’s gray-green cinematography gives the movie a distinctive visual palette while the cast delivers above-average performances, notably Jodie Foster as Meg Altman.
Sleep Tight (2011)
Jaume Balagueró, best known for his works in the REC franchise, directed this creepy Spanish thriller that offers a fresh perspective revolving around the invasion of privacy. The story centers on Cesar (Luis Tosar), a concierge working at Art Nouveau apartment building in Barcelona. His easy-going manner makes him likable but deep down, he’s a highly depressed person who’s particularly fond of Clara (Marta Etura), a beautiful resident who likes to smile a lot. And the strange thing about him? He has a habit of sneaking into her apartment.
Balagueró effectively explores the darkest nature of how far a person would go when comes to the invasion of privacy and in the case of Cesar, it makes my skin crawl thinking about if it happens in real life. The movie is deliberately paced as Balagueró favors the slow-burning dread that builds upon layer by layer. It helps that Luis Tosar excels in his disturbing role as Cesar, which placed him alongside Anthony Perkins’s Norman Bates in Psycho as one of the most chilling psychopath characters ever seen in the history of cinema.
The Collector (2009)
The Collector combines home-invasion horror with torture-porn subgenre and despite its generally negative reviews, Marcus Dunstan – who also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Patrick Melton – does a wickedly good job incorporating both horror elements. The movie doesn’t waste time establishing the protagonist played by Josh Stewart as Arkin O’Brien, an ex-convict-turned-handyman working for the Chase family.
When his wife desperately needs to pay off the debt by midnight, it’s race against time for Arkin, who promises her to get the money on time. His plan? Break into the Chase home and steal a ruby. What he doesn’t realize is finding himself walking into a trap – a booby-trapped house, to be exact with full of sharp objects and bear traps strategically hidden all over the place. There’s a masked killer inside who has imprisoned the Chase family, leaving Arkin with a tough decision to make between stealing the ruby and saving the family.
The movie keeps the identity of the masked killer a.k.a. the titular collector who collects people as vaguely as possible, making him a more formidable antagonist. Josh Stewart delivers a better-than-expected performance as the desperate and conflicted Arkin that has me rooting for his character arc. Dunstan knows well how to pile his movie with copious amount of sadistic gore and violence while generating effective suspense along the way.
Them (2006)
Apparently “based on real events”, David Moreau and Xavier Palud’s home-invasion horror Them follows a young couple (Olivia Bonamy and Michaël Cohen) find themselves terrorised by masked intruders while at home one night. Moreau and Palud, who also co-wrote the screenplay, strips their plot to bare essential with none of the excess fats, namely the slow build-up or an elaborate backstory surrounding the motivation of the intruders. The movie only runs as lean as 74 minutes and the story waste little time getting to the point with the helpless couple desperately trying to stay alive throughout the night. There are no heroes, unlikely or otherwise, only victims of circumstances while the movie does a great job ratcheting up the tension and keeping us on the edge whether the couple can make it alive at the end of the day.
The Purge (2013)
There have been five Purge movies to date with 2021’s The Forever Purge being the recent one so far. At the time of writing, the sixth Purge already has a script ready. Of all The Purge movies I have seen, the James DeMonaco-directed 2013 original remains the best of the lot. The movie boasts an intriguing concept: In 2022, the U.S. has significantly changed after the New Founding Fathers of America took office. The implementation of the Annual Purge, a yearly event where every crime is legal within a 12-hour period on a single night, allowing anyone to start killing and there will be no emergency services involved at the time.
Despite the conceptual premise, writer-director James DeMonaco keeps thing simple within the confines of a home-invasion horror tropes. And it works, thanks to Ethan Hawke’s everyman performance as James Sandin. He plays a wealthy security-system salesman who locks himself with his family in a fortified house during the commencement of the Annual Purge event. But things go awry when his son decided to help a wounded stranger. A group of masked vigilantes led by Rhys Wakefield’s character threaten to kill the family if they refuse to give up the stranger. The survive-the-night setup is effectively executed with enough claustrophobic thrills and suspense and props to DeMonaco for his overall taut direction.
You’re Next (2013)
There are times when Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’s Adam Wingard used to make notable small-scale genre movies like The Guest and of course, You’re Next. The latter sees the director and screenwriter Simon Barrett devises a seemingly typical home-invasion horror storyline: Crispin (A.J. Bowen) and his girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vinson) arrive at his family’s remote countryside mansion to celebrate his parents’ 35th wedding anniversary. Then comes the three mysterious strangers wearing fox masks invading the home and start killing the family members one by one.
It’s all familiar stuff until it really isn’t with Wingard and Barrett turning the genre inside out with a mix of tongue-in-cheek humor and the no-holds-barred, nihilistic home-invasion horror. The story gets crafty with the subsequent reveal of one of the characters’ unexpected capabilities, subverting what we normally expect in a home-invasion horror. Kudos also go to Wingard and Barrett for coming up with the antagonists wearing admittedly creepy fox masks and not to forget, the twist surrounding some of the characters’ true motivations.
Casey Chong
