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The Uninvited

Director: Thomas Guard and Charles Guard

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, David Strathairn, Emily Browning, Arielle Kebbel, Jesse Moss

Genre: Horror / Thriller

Rated: R

Review By:
Michael Dance

School:
NYU Tisch '07

Quote:
"...And hey, I met you. You are not cool." -Almost Famous

the_uninvited-poster
Release Date: January 30th, 2009
Overall Grade: C

The Uninvited

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

The Uninvited

I’m mad at myself for not figuring out the twist ending.

Up until that point, The Uninvited is an average, lazy horror movie: cheap scares, stupid plot points, real by-the-numbers stuff. I was slowly developing a relaxed hatred of it, but then the ending came along, I realized I had missed the obvious clues, and I actually slapped my forehead: duh.

So congratulations, The Uninvited: you got me.

Except…don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. For one thing, you’re yet another remake of a Japanese horror movie, 2003′s A Tale of Two Sisters. And that movie basically ripped off its plot twist from an American movie. A handful of American movies, actually. It had already become a cliché, then A Tale of Two Sisters stole it, and now you, The Uninvited, stole it back again. Congratulations.

I hate reviewing movies with twist endings, because the ending is usually the only reason the movie exists, and yet I can’t talk about it as much as I want without giving it away. But I would like to add that after I got over the forehead-slapping, if you look closer, it doesn’t make sense for lots of reasons. A lot of stuff that you see throughout the movie, you realize, couldn’t have actually happened the way they were presented. And yet some of that stuff had to have happened, or later parts of the movie wouldn’t make sense. They didn’t think it all the way through. Again: it’s lazy.

The story kicks off when teenaged Anna (Emily Browning) is released from a stay at a mental hospital. Last year, her family’s boat house on their big lakefront property had burst into flames — with her sick mother inside — and Anna had subsequently attempted suicide.

Things don’t look like they’ve gotten any better when she gets home. Her mother’s old live-in nurse Rachael (Elizabeth Banks) never left: she’s now moved in with Anna’s father (David Strathairn) — “helping him quote, three times a night,” according to Anna’s sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel).

Rachael’s creepy, in an icy and obviously evil kind of way. This is only confirmed to Anna when she starts getting visions of typical Horror Movie Scary Things — garbage bags with something rustling inside, a pale undead child climbing out from under the stove — and some quick research convinces her and Alex that she’s being warned that Rachael isn’t who she says she is. It’s up to the two sisters to stop her.

Like I said, this is all done in a very familiar fashion to anyone who’s seen a horror movie in the past few years, and the scares feel arbitrary. They use an obvious thematic device — every time Anna’s about to experience something scary, you hear a bell ringing — which might

seem clever, but in practice, only serves to warn us so we can steel ourselves against actually getting scared.

Despite the pervading lameness, Browning is a bright spot in the lead role. She’s attractive in a legitimately unique way and grounds an all-over-the-place character, who is sometimes flirty, sometimes chaste, sometimes fanatical, sometimes subdued.

Banks and Strathairn provide more star power than your average horror movie, but it doesn’t make much of a difference. Banks plays a good creep, but Strathairn is wasted in a tiny role.

The trend of remaking Japanese horror movies needs to end. It’s gotten lazy. They’re just following a formula by now and everything has become a rip-off of a rip-off.

Movie Grade: C

Official Synopsis:

Anna returns home after spending time in the hospital following the tragic death of her mother. Her recovery suffers a setback when she discovers her father has become engaged to her mother’s former nurse. That night, Anna is visited by her mother’s ghost, who warns her of Rachel’s intentions. Together, Anna and her sister try to convince their father that his current fiancée is not who she pretends to be, and what should have been a happy family reunion becomes a lethal battle of wills between stepdaughters and stepmother.

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