The Uninvited (2009)

Director	Charles Guard, Thomas Guard
Writers	Craig Rosenberg, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard
Starring	Emily Browning, Arielle Kebbel, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Banks
Genre	Psychological
Tagline	Fear moves in
Country

Australian actress Emily Browning first appeared in the Hallmark movie The Echo of Thunder (1998), which lead to parts in The Man Who Sued God (2001), and Ned Kelly (2003). It wasn't long before Hollywood noticed the young actress and a trip aboard the Ghost Ship (2002), filmed in Australia but released to North American cinemas, lead to a role in the ill fated major Hollywood outing Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events (2004). The Uninvited marks Emily Browning's first venture into the dark genre.

Talk us through it

Once home to the house on the lake our teen tries to restore her relationship with her older and more pessimistic sister Alex. Alex resents the fact that she has been left to deal with Daddy's new girlfriend Rachel, a blond who originally entered their lives as Mom's nurse.

As Anna and Alex start to reforge their relationship strange thing begin to happen around Anna. Mom's ghost makes a couple of appearances, notable once in the boathouse where the shade points towards the main house and screams out "Murderer!". A little redhead girl, with dexterity beyond the normal pops up from time to time and warns Anna that she will be next. And Anna's boyfriend Matt makes a late night visit after his mysterious death.

All roads lead to Rachel having something more to do with Mom's death than the authorities know, will Anna and Alex uncover the secret or will they be added to the mounting body toll?

Review

Before we launch into the review proper lets get the baggage stacked and put out of the way. The Uninvited is the Hollywood remake of the superior Korean movie A Tale of Two Sisters. The Korean movie is certainly far more visual striking, has a superior but overly complex plot, and knows how to get where it's going without relying on sudden jump scares, currently the preferred method of delivering shocks in Hollywood. With that being said a lot of people need to pull the carrot out of their arse, jump off the bandwagon, and view The Uninvited on it's own merits. Sure the movie doesn't really hold a candle up to the Korean original, but it still delivers on the requirements we the audience have going in. Namely it engages us, delivers some scares, and has a mystery element that will get resolved as the plot progresses.

Director's Charles and Thomas Guard are certainly all over this movie from a visual standpoint. There's some great overhead shots, highlighting the isolation of the house, a very moody and somehow bleak atmosphere throughout the running time, and some superb angles being used. Visually The Uninvited is arresting with the picturesque locations used to perfection. One scene really stood out for me and I was left wondering if the Brothers Guard weren't winking at the audience with a reference to the Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho. Anna looks back from the boathouse to the main house, this requires an upward pointing camera, and Step mom is standing next to a round window. The shot is necessarily a long range one, and brings to mind a similar one Hitchcock employed to show Norman alone with "that" house. Whether or not I'm reading too much into this one shot is up for debate, no where in the extras do either Director mention Hitchcock as an influence. Maybe the scene has become to entrenched in the horror genre it's now a staple used without thought of origin?

One of the interesting aspects of The Uninvited was that the Director's decision on interior lighting in the house was forced due to the chosen building having only recently been erected with dazzling white painted skirting boards etc. The Guards decided to turn down the lights in order to dilute the glaring white and in so doing created an excellent gloomy and effective atmosphere. One of those Spielberg moments when what could have been a major weakness turned out to be a strength.

It's a moody movie that takes parts of the original Korean film but is also content to go it's own way.

While over all praising the Guards eye behind the camera I did find a few instances where they got way to clever for their own good. Trying to re-capture the art house flavour of the original movie is a mistake in my opinion, The Uninvited in no way can be considered art house. For example Anna and Rachel are in a dinner having lunch, when Anna notices ginger girl and her two brothers at the counter. Ginger girl drops a glass of milk, which upon shattering on the floor turns into blood. Okay it's a striking image and the scene is played at an otherworldly pace, but it simply stands out as being completely the wrong approach for the current movie. Cutting in the odd art house scene has more of an effect of confusing audiences than adding to their visual enjoyment.

The other weakness I found in the movie were the actual ghosts, who it's got to be said weren't needed in the final wash-up. Anna has them coming at her left, right, and centre with a U.S movie once again proving it just doesn't know how to get the desired effect from the apparitions. Besides the obligatory jump scenes, anyone else find those more boring then shocking? - we get a whole bunch of ghostly happens that look like they might have been cooked up in a late night meeting to get Creepshow 4 underway. That would be a meeting involving the copious consumption of single malt. Actually Mom's first scene, the whole hand thing, reminded me of Rose Red and the withered arm of terror. With the ghostly shenanigans there's nothing new being done, it all has a feeling of "seen it before, got the tee" rather than having you hiding behind the sofa in terror.

So a mixed bag on the visuals, some great stuff mixed up with some dreck, however where The Uninvited really starts to shine is with an above average script that keeps the plot uncovers well hidden and that does drag you into the story as you piece together the reality of the situation. What did happen at the boathouse on the night of the fire? Unfortunately having already seen A Tale of Two Sisters I already knew the major shock twist coming at you, but by heck they nailed that one in a pretty harrowing scene of despair.

Notably the Writers leave nothing hanging, and even scenes that have no apparent purpose when first shown, think Mildred Kemp here, will tie in by the closing credits.

Emily Browning (Anna) almost carries the movie on her own, Emily is in 90% of the scenes and rocks the house down. Excellent performance from the young actress. Arielle Kebbel's (Alex) performance will become more stunning with a repeat viewing of the movie. Kebbel nails it to the barn door and backs up Browning's stunning turn. David Strathairn (Steven) played it all withdrawn and serious, the role required a stand off approach but it didn't leave Strathairn with much room to navigate. And Elizabeth Banks (Rachel) keeps up her end of the deal with a solid performance as the evil step mother from hell. The scene with the roast is a keeper in my opinion.

Besides Arielle Kebbel making a bikini look good and Liz Banks showing off cleavage not much to get overly excited about. Some fit guy will keep the ladies happy with life, dude what's the name of your gym?

Christopher Young handed in the score and for the life of me I am sure I have heard something similar before. It matches the Guard Brother's visuals, but I have this nagging suspicion that Young might be re-cycling something from a previous movie. Write on in if you can figure it out. Strangely two teenage chicks don't play a lot of music, who would have thought.

Summary Execution

The movie turned out to be disappointing at the Australian box office with a $1.46 million return leaving pundits wondering what went wrong. Unfortunately the trailers pretty much gave the movie away meaning for a lot of people it wasn't worth catching. Added in was a lot of bleating about it being a Hollywood remake, hence evil, and the crowds kept away. The DVD became available last week and thankfully besides the movie, there's more extras than can be destroyed in a boathouse fire. A good overall package there.

I would give this movie a full recommendation for those that don't mind some psychological horror and a mystery that will keep you working to uncover just what's going down. Not as good as the Asian original but a pretty good film in it's own right. Invite it in you wont be disappointed.

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