Unlawful Entry (1992)
Directed by Jonathan Kaplan
When Michael and Karen Carr’s home is robbed, the couple strike up a friendship with duty officer Pete Davis. But the disturbed cop develops an intense fixation on Karen, and his idea of friendship soon turns into a dangerous obsession, making him the Carrs’ worst nightmare.
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What critics compared Unlawful Entry to
The suburban-insecurity theme also stirs memories of David Fincher's Panic Room, Jonathan Kaplan's Unlawful Entry and even Neil Labute's Lakeview Terrace; the barely concealed bloodlust of the bourgeoisie recalls The Last House on the Left; while the idea of state-sanctioned, carefully contained mayhem was executed on a grander scale in The Hunger Games and Rollerball.
At face value, Edgerton’s film about a suspicious oddball intruding upon a married couple’s carefully manicured life sounds akin to serviceable stalker schlock like “Pacific Heights,” “Unlawful Entry” or “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
It's the kind of setup that's typically employed in the context of an entertaining yet far-from-fresh "blank from hell" thriller (eg The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The Temp, Unlawful Entry, etc, etc) and yet writer/director Edgerton does a superb job of ultimately subverting one's expectations, as The Gift, though saddled with a rather familiar opening hour, eventually moves into a third act that's riddled with impossible-to-predict surprises and plot twists.
That's the superficial starting point of The Gift, the directorial debut of actor Joel Edgerton, who takes the cuckoo-in-the-nest thriller template – which became ubiquitous in the early '90s with films like Pacific Heights, Unlawful Entry, Single White Female and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – and, by introducing psychological depth and a streak of social conscience, fashions an intriguing morality tale.
It’s not a home-intrusion thriller, like “Unlawful Entry” (1992) or “Panic Room” (2002), though it’s often spikily tense.
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (nanny from Hell), Unlawful Entry (cop from Hell), Pacific Heights (landlord from Hell), to name just three.