Netflix has been a great place for thriller fans as the streaming platform features plenty of original chilling films while also spotlighting some fan favorites. Netflix's latest original thriller is titled Intrusion. Directed by Adam Salky and written by Chris Sparling, Intrusion is a home invasion tale that promises to add surprising screams to Netflix's catalog.
Intrustion focuses on a married couple, Meera (Freida Pinto) and Henry, who move into their dream home. However, their new home quickly becomes the setting of a nightmare when their house is invaded. Meera is the subject of most of this trauma, and after the inciting incident, things do not improve. She grows distrustful of those around her, even ones she saw as allies. Salky sat with CBR for an exclusive interview about this new thriller and discussed the trauma that the film's characters experience, and shared appeals to him about the thriller genre.
CRB: I would love to know what originally drew you to this script.
Adam Salky: I read Intrusion, and I was immediately grabbed by the shirt collar, by the script. It kept me on the edge of my seat. I've always been a huge fan of thrillers, in particular thrillers from the '90s, like Basic Instinct, Se7en, Silence of the Lambs -- although I don't know if we can exactly call Silence of the Lambs a thriller: it's perhaps more than that. It reminded me of those films. I've always wanted to make a throwback to one of those types of movies.
Separately, I had a strong personal connection to the script because the main character, Meera, played by Freida Pinto, is a breast cancer survivor. I thought that journey that Chris Sparling, the writer, detailed in the script authentically portrayed what my best friend growing up went through at around the same age as that character. I wanted to tell a personal throwback genre film.
Touching on that survivor aspect, that's one of my favorite aspects of the thriller genre. I would love to know why Meera is such an empowering character, especially through the story of a survivor.
Great question.
So, the Meera character goes on a journey from traumatized victim -- at first traumatized by her illness, and then a pretty shocking home invasion and shocking acts of violence that occur during the home invasion -- and then through the course of the film, she becomes an empowered survivor through how she handles these pretty terrifying and suspenseful things that happened to her life and marriage.
On top of that, you're talking about trauma, and we've seen in a lot of recent films and shows exploring how female trauma impacts survivors, as well as how it can be perceived by others who may not understand what they're going through. So I would love to know what you wanted to add to this ongoing conversation.
I'd be the first person to point out the limitations of my point of view. I'm not a woman, but that was why when I read the script, it really reminded me of my friend's journey. I did a lot of research and made sure that I had all the knowledge to bring to telling the story.
At the same time, all of my work has been about trauma. My first feature, Dare, in some ways, it's about the creation of that when you're an adolescent. My second feature, I Smile Back, is about someone who's struggling with mental illness and addiction. In fact, my family's personal story is basically an immigrant family that came to this country after a horrible genocide. So the idea of trauma and how that affects people and how they take that through their lives and how it affects their behavior is something that's always fascinated me in my work.
Thank you so much for sharing that with me. We also have Meera's husband. The thriller genre is often great at exploring differing marital and interpersonal issues. What are you most excited to unpack with their relationship in this movie?
One of the most intriguing questions that the movie poses is how well you know those closest to you. And, really, how well you can know anyone?
In many ways, Intrusion is about the terrifying unknowability of people, and how there's nothing scarier than that blind spot with those closest to you. I have always been fascinated by that. I've been fascinated by identity and from my first feature, Dare, from a high school perspective, the masks that people try on in order to figure out who they are. I think that this is a fascinating part of real life. Intrusion plays with that in a thriller genre, which is something I'd never done before. It's a concept that I find very fascinating, and I think probably is gonna freak people out.
Also looking at this relationship, I would love to know what it was like working with these actors, especially when it came to delving into this complicated pairing, and the more than tense circumstances they find themselves in.
I count myself as the luckiest director. Freida Pinto, who played Meera, and Logan Marshall-Green, were my top choices, and also the best possible people to play these roles. Freida, who obviously had such a breakout performance in Slumdog Millionaire, which is such a breakout film, exudes warmth. That was really at the core of the Meera character, who's also a child adolescent therapist. I was also intrigued by the idea of her doing something she'd never done before because the idea of a surprise in casting to me is fascinating. Freida had never done a thriller. I think that audiences are gonna see her in a way that they've never seen before, which excites me as a director.
Logan is a chameleon. Logan is always different in everything that he does. I think that really fits this character because he's someone that we're trying to get a read on throughout the whole movie. And together, they're so fantastic. When we meet them, they're this really loving, amazing couple that's been through this trauma, and have come out the other end, and they're stronger for it. They have that chemistry that allows us to believe that there's this incredible couple that all of a sudden is going to come under this really terrifying threat in the film.
Shifting gears a bit from our characters to the location, both the house and neighborhood play major roles in Intrusion as well, with the couple moving to this new area, and Meera feeling very unsure and unsafe, especially after what happened. How important was the location to you, and how did you want to bring that to life?
The house is a character in this film. Logan's character, Henry, is an architect, and this is actually a house that he built for them to have this new chapter in life where she's in remission, and they're reconnecting and kind of putting this traumatic history behind them. So the house, I really wanted it to be very specific, modern, architectural. I also wanted it to have, again with this idea of unknowability and the unknowability of people, it also had to have somewhat of a mystery to the space.
We actually found it on location in Albuquerque, and it was a needle in a haystack. Because the dominant architectural style in Albuquerque is Pueblo Revival, not modern homes. We found it totally by luck. The cinematographer went to the grip rental house and asked the owner if he knew of any modern homes in the neighborhood, and this home was actually owned by a friend of his, so that's how we found it.
That's awesome. Touching a bit on what you were saying earlier about how you've always like '90s thrillers, I would love to know what about that specific time period of thriller appeals to you and what can we expect in this movie that we may see that's similar or different from that decade of thriller?
The '90s thrillers that I'm most inspired by are, for example, David Fincher's work, which is Se7en, The Game. These movies are incredibly visually specific, and those visuals are meant to heighten tension or heighten the fear or show us maybe a glimpse of the unknown, but not all of it necessarily. That's keeping us on the edge of our seats. I've been inspired by that with Intrusion. It definitely has a very specific visual design to it that's intended to do the same thing, but it does have a contemporary twist. Some of the ways in which the visuals play themselves out.
There's a scene toward the end, where Meera has just learned a pretty potentially devastating secret. She walks all the way from the outside of her house, all the way through the house, to a very specific location in one long take. The camera is doing a rotation that we actually added in post-production that creates the thematic idea that she's descending into hell. It's one of the scenes I was most excited about shooting. I think it shows some of the ways in which I tried to build on some of the visual stylings that happens in it.
Nice. Talking about some of the scenes, as well as working on the set, what was one of your favorite memories from this project?
There are so many, but actually, the day that I arrived in Albuquerque, I drove to the rental that the production had made for me. It was down in downtown Albuquerque, which was a little deserted, and a little gritty, a little nice, but a little gritty. I arrived at the house and the garage door's open. I get out of the car, and I'm like, "Oh, the garage is open. Maybe they just do that for all of the guests. I'm sure the back door will be locked." I go to the back door, and the back door is unlocked.
Cut to me kind of creeping through the house with my phone at the ready, checking every single room to make sure there's no one there. It turned out that, thankfully, the house was empty, but it was really an auspicious beginning for this thriller, that my experience on Intrusion actually began with the beginnings of what felt like my own home invasion.
I would hate that. I would absolutely hate that.
That wasn't the most fun part of making the movie, but it did keep me on the edge of my seat in life.
Wrapping this up, what do you hope audiences take away from this film?
I hope that they take away that it's not possible to necessarily know everything about those closest to you, but also a little bit of a note of empowerment in the end as Meera is able to contend with those secrets and that intrigue and hopefully come out on top. This is a tough movie to talk about because there's so much that you can't talk about.
Exactly.
It deals with secrets. Some pretty explosive ones. I guess that one will just have to watch it to see what happened.