by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

There’s just something about home invasion horror movies. A subgenre in its own right, the films always include someone breaking into a house, obviously, but they often get more complicated than that. Sometimes, they go beyond the simple set-up to say something about society, humanity, and privilege. But sometimes? Well it’s just because they were home.

My house was broken into three times in one summer, which made this subgenre particularly effective for me. I almost always look up if a horror movie includes the trope before I go see it. It’s not that I can’t handle it, but I like to be prepared if it does! It’s so scary because it happens a lot. And it can happen to anyone. 

Drilling down into the subgenre, I’d like to focus on the women in these films. There are the survivors, the badass women, the victims, but some are the invaders. Some are fighting against evil strangers, some are defending their children, some are thieves, and some are facing the Purge (yikes)!

Kristen (Liv Tyler) — The Strangers (2008)

This movie has a very simple set-up: Kristen and James (Scott Speedman) are in James’s childhood home when a woman knocks on the door. The stranger asks for someone who doesn’t live there, and then comes back a second and third time. When James leaves, the stranger comes back with friends to attack Kristen. Every escape attempt Kristen and then James make is thwarted by the strangers, ending with the couple tied up and stabbed.

Compared to some of the other films on this list, Kristen is pretty passive. But what really sets this one apart is that when Kristen asks the strangers why they attacked them, they say, “because you were home.” A random act of violence, no reasoning behind it. And the most unsettling part of the movie is the very end, when you realize that Kristen survived the attack!

Mary (Lena Headey) and Zoe (Adelaide Kane) — The Purge (2013)

The Purge is a 12-hour period where anyone can do anything. Murder, breaking and entering, assault, and so on are all legal. There are no emergency services. And so when a rich family thinks they’re safe, they’re really in for the worst night of their lives. Mary and Zoe, after Charlie (Max Burkholder), realize just how fucked-up the Purge is as a concept. Faced with an unknown stranger inside the house and fully deranged people at the door threatening to break in and kill that stranger, things get messy.

While I absolutely hate how the camera shows Zoe’s teenage body, I think her character works really well. She doesn’t fully grasp how serious the Purge is until about the midpoint, when all hell breaks loose. And then she comes in clutch to defend the family when it counts. There’s some really terrifying camerawork here as Mary and Zoe walk through the house in the dark and we can see the invaders tracking them through the halls.

Mary gets the upper hand against a new set of invaders and insists that no more violence happen in her house. She makes everyone sit together at the table in silence—using a little bit of violence to enforce her rule—until the alarm goes off, signaling the end of the Purge. We don’t see what happens to them afterward, but my god, I hope they move out of their neighborhood!

Rocky (Jane Levy) — Don’t Breathe (2016)

Rocky has escaped her abusive mother and is taking care of her little sister by herself. To be able to provide for her sister, she regularly breaks into homes and steals valuables with two friends. They plan to break into a blind man’s home after hearing rumors that he won money in a settlement. Of course, things don’t go according to plan. The movie shifts from Rocky as the hunter to the hunted, as Norman (Stephen Lang), the blind man, fights against the home invaders. 

As things go from bad to worse, she finds a woman locked in the basement and is quickly faced with unspeakable violence from Norman. She tries several different ways of escaping the house, including the classic of crawling through ventilation ducts. It’s a tour de force from Jane Levy and an incredibly stressful watch.

Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) — Us (2019)

Us undeniably has a lot to say, but it’s also got a home invasion set-up baked in. Adelaide and her family go to their lake house for a vacation, where they’re faced with a menacing group of four standing at the end of their driveway. Each member of the family is faced with their doppelganger—their tether, each with murderous intent. As the film branches out, we see Adelaide face off against her tether and Zora take off running away from hers. Lupita Nyong’o’s work as Red, her tether, is particularly scary, as are the animalistic kids, Umbrae and Pluto.

When Adelaide and her family go to their friend’s house, they’ve also been attacked by their own doppelgangers. We discover that the tethers are attacking everywhere. Adelaide has a big plan to keep running from their tethers in order to stay alive. This movie, like The Purge, has a lot to say about privilege. If there’s a version of you that has access to society and a tether underground with none of those opportunities, how could you handle coming face-to-face with them? 

Beyond this selection, there are so many more home invasion films to peruse! If you’re up for it, you can watch Breaking In, where Gabrielle Union escapes and then breaks back into a house to save her kids from intruders. There’s also Hush, which features a deaf woman trying to evade a masked man. And of course, older movies like Black Christmas, Panic Room, and When a Stranger Calls. Whatever flavor of home invasion, or type of heroine, you’re looking for, there’s a movie out there!