How to watch the full “terrifying” Intruders short film

Here’s how to watch Intruders, a nightmarish horror short film that’s been freaking people out on TikTok, as well as a breakdown of what actually happens.

Some of the best horror movies take up less than 10 minutes of your day. Short films have been the source of some of the genre’s best and most frightening scares for years; whether you want something harrowing (The Kid and the Camera), disturbing (Curve), or fun (Lights Out).

TikTok drives extraordinary interest toward underrated (and mostly under-seen) short films; all it takes is a creepy clip and a caption that probably claims it’s on Netflix while also omitting the title, and you’ve got millions of views and a lot of curiosity (this is what happened with Special Day and Backstroke).

Intruders has garnered a fair bit of interest, so here’s where you can stream it and, if you’re too scared to watch it, what goes down.

Where to watch Intruders short film

Intruders is available to stream in its entirety for free on YouTube. Check it out below:

It was first uploaded to the Screamfest channel in May 2017. In the years since, it’s amassed more than 4.5 million views.

Clips from the short film do the rounds on TikTok semi-regularly. It first went viral in April 2023, with one video racking up nearly 11 million views, while another soon after has been watched over 650,000 times.

Intruders short film explained

Intruders is divided into three chapters, charting how a sinister omnipresent entity causes havoc in the private lives of a young boy, an unsuspecting teen, and an absent-minded inspector.

The movie opens at 5:45am. We’re inside a dark house as local kids chuck eggs and wooden planks at the window, the kitchen is full of dirty plates, glasses, and food that’s already rotting on the counter. As a car drives by, its lights drift across the room and briefly reveal a young, gaunt-looking boy in the corner.

In another room, a woman (presumably his mother) lies dead on the sofa. The young boy stands next to her in the dark as the kids outside chap the door and run away.

We move onto the next chapter, following Jacov in his city apartment. As he’s drawing at his desk, he hears strange voices outside, so he grabs his telescope and walks out to the balcony to take a look. At first, he doesn’t see anything — until he catches sight of a large woman strangling a man in another building. She not only sees him, but points at him and runs across the street to his building. We hear her barreling up the stairs, before slinking into the room.

Jacov slides to the floor, accepting his horrifying fate. It cuts to black, and then we see him walking up the stairs, groaning and stumbling like a zombie.

The final vignette revolves around the inspector, who arrives at the same house from the start of the film. He walks in and immediately starts taking photographs, all while a faint gargling can be heard in the background. All of the rooms are empty, and the dead woman has been moved from the couch.

In the last shot, he takes a photograph of the hallway, with the flash revealing the young boy at the end of the corridor.

What does Intruders mean?

Intruders is deliberately ambiguous, and director Santiago Menghini hasn’t given any easy answers. However, viewers have come up with their own theories, with the prevailing idea that the young boy connects all three stories.

Screamfest

The short film is based on two short comics: 5:45am by Al Columbia and Jacov by Uno Moralez. There isn’t any clear through-line between them, but fans have pointed out something simple that makes it easier to understand: the two teenagers at the beginning of the film are the same boys who are killed in the second segment.

On YouTube, one user theorized: “Alright, here’s my take; the kid died a long time ago, and his spirit remained in the house, haunting his mother. Whether she was aware of it or not, she spent the rest of her days accompanied by this spirit. Sometime later the mother perished too. Some people say the teens gave her a heart attack and scared her to death but she had clearly already been dead when they egged her house.

“The woman had no living relatives and nobody to find her body for a while so when the boys egged her house, even though she had been dead a while back, her body remained in the house with her kid’s ghost.

“The boy’s spirit possessed the mother’s body and followed the teens to their apartments. First it followed the teen in the back, broke into his apartment, and killed him, and then when it spotted the other teen it ran across and took him out as well. When it killed him it took possession of his body and that left his mother’s body behind in his apartment. He took off with the teen’s body and when his parents or loved ones checked in on him they found his body missing but a dead woman’s body in his apartment.

“In order to find the teen they hired a private detective who was able to pin the woman’s address down and tried to visit her for any hints at where the teen could be. And when he finally gets there he sees the ghost of the child.”

Is Intruders worth watching?

Intruders is an impressive short film. Across three distinctly grim (and rather depressing) chapters, it emphasizes the loneliness of existence; life, death, and anything that comes after.

It’s been praised by viewers online, with one writing: “The way she is running to him is so much more scary than a jump scene… that was terrifying.”

“The feeling of witnessing something scary then being seen, and then being chased/stalked and no where to hide or run, is like something out of a literal nightmare,” another commented. “Hands down, the moment she comes through the door taller than the door itself and then proceeds to rush at the boy is one of the best horror scenes ever,” a third wrote.

Intruders is streaming now. Find even more amazing new movies and TV shows streaming this month, or dive into all the new true crime documentaries around right now. If that’s not enough, find out what’s in store this year for K-dramas coming to Netflix.