Movie Review - 'The Uninvited'

Remakes of Asian horror movies and supernatural thrillers have polluted movie theaters based on the commercial and critical success of one film: The Ring.

Since 2003, we’ve been subjected to The Grudge, Shutter, Alone, One Missed Call, Mirrors, The Eye, Dark Water, and, well, you get the point. None of them have built on what The Ring created, an overwhelming sense of creepy dread dressed in the clothes of a slick American suspense flick.

How can this genre still be around after all its sophomore, junior, senior, graduate, and post-graduate slumps?

There is life in its newest entry, The Uninvited, but you have to wait 75 minutes to find the pulse. This remake is based on the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters and is directed by Charles and Anthony Guard, billed here as The Guard Brothers, as if their last name is really Coen.

Troubled teen Anna (Emily Browning from Lemony Snicket) saw her invalid mother die in house fire and when we meet her a year later, she is explaining her recurring nightmares to a psychiatrist. It's not an outpatient arrangement, it turns out, but ten months after she arrived, Anna is free to go home with her father (David Straithairn) and try to put one foot in front of the other again.

The haunting images don't go away at home, but nothing haunts her as much as her father’s new girlfriend – and her mother’s one-time nurse – Rachael (Elizabeth Banks). Anna suspects Rachael set the fire, and believes she is now out to horn in on her dad’s money at any cost, even if it means more murders.

Remakes of Asian horror movies and supernatural thrillers have polluted movie theaters based on the commercial and critical success of one film: The Ring.

Since 2003, we’ve been subjected to The Grudge, Shutter, Alone, One Missed Call, Mirrors, The Eye, Dark Water, and, well, you get the point. None of them have built on what The Ring created, an overwhelming sense of creepy dread dressed in the clothes of a slick American suspense flick.

How can this genre still be around after all its sophomore, junior, senior, graduate, and post-graduate slumps?

There is life in its newest entry, The Uninvited, but you have to wait 75 minutes to find the pulse. This remake is based on the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters and is directed by Charles and Anthony Guard, billed here as The Guard Brothers, as if their last name is really Coen.

Troubled teen Anna (Emily Browning from Lemony Snicket) saw her invalid mother die in house fire and when we meet her a year later, she is explaining her recurring nightmares to a psychiatrist. It's not an outpatient arrangement, it turns out, but ten months after she arrived, Anna is free to go home with her father (David Straithairn) and try to put one foot in front of the other again.

The haunting images don't go away at home, but nothing haunts her as much as her father’s new girlfriend – and her mother’s one-time nurse – Rachael (Elizabeth Banks). Anna suspects Rachael set the fire, and believes she is now out to horn in on her dad’s money at any cost, even if it means more murders.


Source: getthebigpicture.net