Two out of
Five stars
Running time:
91 mins
Laughably bad thriller that teeters on the edge of so-bad-it's-good territory, thanks to pointlessly flashy direction, a dreadful script, a ridiculous plot and some reliably bonkers over-acting from Nicolas Cage.
What's it all about?
Directed by Joel Schumacher (No, wait, come back! etc), Trespass stars Nicolas Cage as diamond dealer Kyle Miller, who lives in a luxury home with his bored wife Sarah (Nicole Kidman) and their rebellious teenage daughter Avery (Liane Liberato). What with Avery at the sneaking-out-to-meet-boys stage and Sarah bitterly resenting the amount of time he spends at work, Kyle has more than enough problems to be getting along with, but his already miserable day quickly gets a whole lot worse when armed thugs (Ben Mendelsohn, Cam Gigandet, Dash Mihok and Jordana Spiro) invade his home, take Sarah hostage and demand that he opens his safe.
The Good
Make no mistake, this is a terrible movie, but at least it's entertainingly terrible, which is more than can be said for Justice, another terrible Nic Cage thriller that's out next week. The main source of enjoyment in Trespass is Cage, who puts in some reliably bonkers over-acting and shouts a lot (“No, no, no, no, no, NO! No. No.
NO!”) while making the most of his full nerd make-up (“My glasses! My glasses!”), though Liberato also acquits herself nicely as Avery and gets one of the film's only decent scenes.
The Bad
Mendolsohn (from Animal Kingdom) does his best, but he's hampered by a ridiculous script that's full of dreadful dialogue and a series of increasingly ridiculous twists and turns. Similarly, Schumacher over-directs like his life depends on it, with blaring music, fast cuts and badly edited flashback sequences galore, while the film builds to a ridiculously stupid and disproportionately nasty climax that has to be seen to be believed.
On top of that, Cam Gigandet (who's never knowingly in a good film and whose presence has come to signify the mark of a stinker) provides another gloriously wooden performance (complete with requisite shirt-off moment) and Nicole Kidman sports a hilariously panicked expression throughout as if she can't quite believe she's in this rubbish either.
Worth seeing?
In short, as a straight-up thriller Trespass is a complete wash-out, but it's just about worth seeing providing you know in advance that it's laugh-out-loud terrible and fans of bad Nicolas Cage movies won't be disappointed.