This will be a pretty short review. The newest film from independent filmmaker Mickey Keating is only 70 minutes long and doesn’t have much plot to speak of. On the other hand, it’s more about a situation.
INVADER is currently playing a limited engagement at several Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas before wider release later this year. It begins with some FBI stats about break-ins and then proceeds to stage one in the most literal terms possible: Someone smashing the ever-loving shit out of a home with a sledgehammer. From there we meet Ana (Vero Maynez), who gets off a bus at 4:30 in the morning and finds herself alone in an empty, uninviting depot she’s come to town to see her cousin Camila, but Camila isn’t answering her phone, and Ana’s efforts to secure herself a cab result in the first of many unpleasant surprises. As Ana makes her way toward Camila’s place, she walks through blighted stretches of garbage-strewn vacant lots, faded flags hanging off poles and crumbling buildings; before anyone so much as lays eyes on her or any other character in this movie gets physically damaged in any way whatsoever, Keating has already plunged us into the heart of America’s broken dream.
Ana and every other person we see in this movie are Latinx, except for one. So there’s a moment when I think maybe one of them is undocumented, too. But INVADER isn’t political; these things aren’t highlighted or made into themes. That goes for how Keating tells the story overall, which is more about small details than big events. Ana goes around Camila’s neighborhood, finds things that make her think something is very wrong here and teams up with local Carlo (Colin Huerta), who helps her when she least expects it. The two of them go to Camila’s house.
And that’s all you should know about what happens in the movie, because there isn’t much more to it than that, communicated through trim (Spanish and subtitled) dialogue. My guess is that INVADER doesn’t have a script longer than 30 or 40 pages. What matters is the sensation created by Keating as his nearly always handheld camera follows Ana through one increasingly desperate situation after another until they become truly horrifying. In its bones, INVADER recalls Keating’s previous OFFSEASON, which also kept close to a female lead as she moved through an unfamiliar environment almost completely emptied out here suburban locations shot near Chicago although in between the two movies he worked on EYES OF MY MOTHER with Nicolas Pesce. (Even then, it’s designed to disorient; a broadcast heard during the opening credits will have you thinking we’re in the ’70s at first, while another playing during an establishing shot later indicates we’re actually much closer to right now.)
But where OFFSEASON maintained composure under its slow-burn surface ripples, Keating keeps his style on edge throughout INVADER: This thing may get divisive just on account of using shaky-cam for 90 minutes straight and ending where it does (although I would argue against both). Here it’s a valid choice, as the story remains one of Ana being shaken up and too long in that state can wear you out. Though it does calm down for a while, courtesy of Shayfer James’ score, during a stretch of the later going. Until then, the equally assaultive soundscape provided by Shawn Duffy hums with tension beneath Fisken’s bleak cinematography and Krulfeifer’s jagged editing all three returning from OFFSEASON. Keating has clearly hit on a crew that gets him and likes what he’s trying to do; their commitment to this aggressive style will keep anyone who jives with it watching this short movie through their fingers.
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