Trespass – 2 Buckets

While watching Trespass, you often wonder whether director Joel Schumacher and actor Nicolas Cage are secretly parodying their respective reputations for B-grade thrillers, because the movie incorporates so many low-rent clichés that it is hard to believe, let alone take seriously. However, resisting this suspicion and suspending disbelief is essential, because maintaining the illusion that everyone involved sought to deliver a quality white-knuckler is the only way to enjoy the picture. As self-deprecation, Trespass is simply pathetic, because Schumacher and Cage would be among the last people on Earth to mock how bad their movies can be. But as an honest attempt at popcorn filmmaking, it is the definitive cinematic artifact of unintentional hilarity this year.

Shumacher takes his dependably over-the-top depiction of crime–in this case, a home-invasion to burgle diamond dealer Cage’s private stockpile–to an extreme, having the characters do nothing but yell at one another in distress for 75% of the 90 minute running time. You would think this would get annoying, but on the contrary, it’s impossible to stop watching because the movie is such a train-wreck; Schumacher seemingly fosters a single tone — chaos. The director doesn’t even pretend to care about building tension through structure; instead, he simply piles on one genre cliché after another. The way that Schumacher is able to work the ‘ol ‘turpentine spilling toward an open flame’ scenario into the climax, for instance, is so arbitrary it nearly defies comprehension.

All the while, Cage perfects his uncanny ability to scream at the top of his lungs (following Schumacher’s direction to a tee) and retain his monotone vocal range at the same time, a feat that Andy Samberg could only dream of emulating in his “Saturday Night Live” parody. Cage is joined by Nicole Kidman as his wife, in a performance comprised of one vulnerable-looking reaction shot after another as the burglars terrorize the family.

Trespass is primarily being distributed via Video On Demand, but you should try to see it in a theater with a big audience (good luck with that) because it just begs to have popcorn thrown at it. In fact, in this way, it is a popcorn movie in its own right — probably not how Schumacher intended for it to be, but a crowd pleaser nonetheless. So long as Schumacher and Cage don’t reveal that it was all just one big joke (thereby robbing the experience of its oblivious magic), then perhaps Trespass will have a future as Midnight programming.

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Trespass (2011, USA). Produced by René Besson, Boaz Davidson, Danny Dimbort, Matthew F. Leonetti Jr., Avi Lerner, Trevor Short, David Winkler, and Irwin Winkler. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written for the screen by Karl Gajdusek. Starring Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Ben Mendelsohn, Liana Liberato, Cam Gigandet, Jordana Spiro, and Dash Mihok. Distributed by Millennium Films. Rated R, with a running time of 91 minutes.