Home is where the heart is. It's also where the hackneyed thriller lies as well, if you believe the unbearably bad Trespass. As yet another chink in the already disabled Academy armor of one Nicolas Cage, this mess requires Oscar honey Nicole Kidman and a wealth of worthless wannabes to sit around and scream at each other for 90 minutes. While supposedly one of those intense nailbiters that keep you glued to the edge of your seat, all you really wind up with is a dull headache and a sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach. As entertainment, it's excruciating. As a likability litmus test, it's a sign of the Apocalypse.
Cage is dork desperate as diamond merchant Kyle Miller. His life is slowly falling apart - distant, neglected trophy wife Sarah (Kidman) and mandatory disgruntled teen Avery (Liana Liberato) along for the angst driven ride. In a ploy that only works in the movies, a couple of "police officers" worm their way into the family's post-modern McMansion only to be revealed as robbers Elias (Ben Mendelsohn) and his dopey brother Jonah (Cam Gigandet). Along with slut-bag stripper Petal (Jordana Spiro) and muscle Ty (Dash Mihok), they want whatever's in Kyle's massive wall safe - and won't take no, or any amount of sweaty scenery chewing, for an answer. Of course, things go gonzo goofy the minute the contents of the vault are revealed, as well as when secrets from the recent past come forward to fill in the blanks.
If there was ever a time when Joel Schumacher was a 'good' director (and said compliment needs to be used cautiously), he has long since lost the right to enjoy such a description. In the last few years, he's given us howlers like The Number 23, Blood Creek, and Twelve while constantly striving toward the commercial and critical success his work in the '80s and '90s seemed to enjoy. Using his camera like a lash and whipping his unfortunate actors into a genre froth, Trespass treads the fine line between camp and crap to a certain point. Then, when its actors are good and embarrassed, it dives directly into the dung heap and never looks back. This is a movie of rants, of characters confessing their inner illogic in loud, obnoxious blurts. Just when we think we can't get any more gobsmacked, another revelation sends us reeling.
The biggest problem here is the preposterous script by first time film scribe Karl Gajdusek. Hoping that goofy pronouncements and cliched plotting will win over a clueless crowd, he borrows liberally from narratives past (Desperate Hours, Panic Room, Lady in a Cage) to cover up the fact that he has nothing new to say. We know that, somehow, the bad guys will have personal knowledge of the Miller's household dynamic, that there will be infidelity and sexual suspicions, and in the end, a silly, stilted conclusion. Gajdusek's only attempt at originality is tying everything to the recent economic downturn, arguing that such flagrant disregard for staying within one's income bracket leads to a false sense of security...and a desire on the part of criminals to take what you really don't have. As with most money-oriented mandates, the sentiment falls on deaf ears.
While Cage and Kidman can be forgiven for making bad choices - an overview of their career provides more than enough support for their sloppy decision-making - Trespass ends up appearing like an easily avoidable aberration. The warning signs and red flags are literally strewn throughout the pages of the screenplay. Perhaps everyone thought Mr. Schumacher could salvage something out of this miserable mess. They were wrong.
