by: Dr. Boogie

...CONTINUED

So now Jen is alone. Well, alone with her psycho ex-boyfriend and one other psycho. A noise startles her.

Ha ha, it's just Sting again. Take that, Gordon!

Jen decides to wander around reciting the names of everyone who's been killed so far. We start to see that Jen's biggest weakness, besides her taste in men, is that she is extremely nearsighted: walking around the store, she fails to notice the now completely bloody lobster tank.

Neither does she notice the gristly remains of Dave on the band saw, nor yet another stray eyeball on the floor.

Because of this handicap, Jen has almost no situation awareness.

The killer must know her well enough to recognize that near total blindness makes her the ideal candidate for a prolonged chase. He pops up and scares her into hiding in the meat locker where once again, her handicap causes her to miss some important details.

She does manage to grab a meat hook because it's inside her 1-foot cone of vision. Then a noise startles her into leaving the meat locker. Suddenly the killer, who has completely circled around her and is new inside the meat locker too, reaches out to try and grab her as she escapes. Though he has been shown to be strong enough to haul full-sized men around with ease, he cannot push the waifish Jen away from the door.

She stabs him with the hook, but it barely registers with him. You get the impression that he only flinched because he felt bad for how poorly she was doing. She manages to jam the door shut using Randy's dangling corpse, and then it's time to check on all the other corpses in the store.

She goes upstairs to the manager's office, but the blood leaking under the door tells the story. Then she blunders into the grocery time fun slide.

Points for the killer. Solid burn.

Alright, let's check on Bob next...

Yep, still flattened. How about Joe?

Chopped up into pieces at some earlier event that nobody noticed. Fantastic.

Dave?

See how much better the model looks with blood covering up the waxy parts?

Okay, that just leaves Linda and Bill. Unless Bill isn't dead. Haven't really heard much from him for a while. Nope. Sure haven't...

Before the tour can continue, the lights go out. Jen bolts for the front door, but can't for the life of her figure out how to open it.

Oh, as if things couldn't get any worse for her. Now that guy who punched her in the face a few hours ago is back.

Well to paraphrase the Dalai Lama: "Never sneak up on a woman holding a meat hook."

Really, that move should be bringing her some relief, but she seems distraught. I mean, Craig, wasn't the killer, but given another couple days, he probably would have been.

The sound of footsteps approaching tells her that there's still plenty of movie yet to see.

Oh, it's just Bill. That's a relief. For a minute, I thought the killer was still out there. Bill laughingly explains that he got knocked out by Craig, what a jokester. His jovial manner makes Jen completely forget that they've both probably walked through their friends' entrails several times in the past few minutes.

It's not until she spots Bill's bloody hand that she starts to suspect that something might be up.

Of course, she stabbed the killer in the right hand, so seeing Bill's bloody left hand shouldn't make her all that concerned, but like I said earlier, she is extremely nearsighted and probably can't differentiate hands at a distance. Bill knows the jig is up, and a rousing chase sequence begins:

Kudos to Bill for doing all this without falling and breaking his back.

He finally grabs a fistful of Jen's hair and sets her down for a full explanation of this Shyamalanian twist:

Danny wanted to sell the store and Bill didn't. That's it. And he killed everyone else because, "I just got carried away." You know how it is when you're in the heat of the moment and you start chopping people up and meticulously placing their severed body parts around the area, sometimes going as far as to put them in humorous tableau with funny little signs next to them. Crimes of passion!

Jen tells Bill that he's crazy. He responds:

"I'm just crazy about this store!"

It must have taken great restraint on the part of the writers not to include anything about "slashing prices", or "price gouging", or anything else like that.

In yet another turn of events that left me speechless, Jen bops Bill on the head with a plastic bottle and runs away. They even play a little glass breaking sound when she drops it to try and cover up the fakeness, but it's too little too late.

Jen stows herself into some kind of cabinet trying to escape from Bill. This works until her nose starts bleeding to the point that it... mixes with some water on the floor and gives her away? I don't know, the movie kind of loses me here. Point is, Bill hacks away at the cabinet with the cleaver just long enough to reveal that it's a completely dull prop cleaver.

The chase is back on, hampered by Bill stopping to straighten a few shelves. Think of it like the Tortoise and the Hare: Bill is so far ahead of Jen that he can afford these little distractions. Meanwhile, Jen grabs a couple prop knives out of the back and heads back into the aisles. Instead of, you know, leaving out the back door. But hey, I've never worked in a grocery store, so maybe I just don't know.

Bill emerges sans cleaver from the shelves and just lifts Jen off the ground by the head. Ol' butterfingers Jen immediately drops one knife and stabs the other into a cereal box. Luckily, the theme of breaking objects over Bill's head continues with a jar of wheat germ. I hope the actor got hazard pay for this.

note: Odd how they used generic beer cans earlier, but included vintage name brand cereal boxes in this scene.

Finally, FINALLY, she gets the idea to break through the front door. Unfortunately, she's about as strong as a newborn kitten and can't even scratch the glass door. How did she even find the strength to lift that fire extinguisher? Or the 8oz jar of wheat germ?

Thank goodness a helpful bread delivery guy shows up.

Ladies and gentleman, the director of our film.

Also a reminder: Bill recovered from the jar to the head, picked up a knife, ran to the back to get outside, ran all the way around the store to get to the front, and then stabbed the guy who decided to pop by the store for a little 2am bread delivery. Damn he's got some moves!

A noise draws Jen into the store where she happens up Danny. He crawled all the way down from the attic just to...

"Help me. Somebody help me."

...and then he ran back inside, picked up Danny's severed head that he severed earlier, ran back down to the floor, and posed for this trap!

Ah, who am I kidding? I love this guy. I don't care that he's faster than Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees combined. He's so lovably manic as a psycho killer.

There's still plenty more of Intruder to see!
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