Mickey Keating is a wide-eyed student of horror cinema. Each of his films is an homage to a subgenre, loaded with well-studied influences. Hitchcock, Carpenter, and others make stylistic cameos in films like Darling and Offseason, with his latest—Invader—giving us Keating's take on home invasions. It's a tight 68 minutes that echoes Funny Games, The Strangers, and even Adam Mason's Hangman, but in its stripped-raw approach, struggles to captivate as a blustery snapshot of a grander account.

Vero Maynez stars as Ana, a woman in transit heading to her cousin's house in the Chicago suburbs. Things get dodgy when Ana can't contact her family, nor does Camila (Ruby Vallejo) show up at her grocery store job. Ana teams with Camila's coworker Carlo (Colin Huerta) to investigate her disappearance, which leads to a horrifying discovery—a beer-swigging, gimp-suit-dressing invader has taken over Camila's residence. Without hesitation, Ana jumps into...