Dirs. Charles & Thomas Guard, US, 2009, 87mins
Cast: Emily Browning, Arielle Kebbel, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Massar
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Picture this; a group of highly paid, credit-crunch avoiding studio executives are having a brainstorming session around a table fit for a king. In the middle of the table are a pile of original scripts that they haven't had time to read, being too busy prepping LiLo on her next straight-to-DVD epic. Then, one latte supping, pressed shirt sporting, little upstart utters the following sentence — one that will no doubt be replicated across the filmmaking world — “Why don't we just see if there are any J-horror movies that haven't been remade yet?”. Ladies and gentlemen, The Uninvited .
Or if you prefer, 2003's Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters), here remoulded into the story of Anna Rydell (Browning), a fragile young girl returning to the homestead after a stint in a mental institution. Reunited with her sister Alex (Kebbel) they must struggle to pick up the pieces of a family affected by tragedy, a job made all the more difficult by, and say this to yourself in a heightened comedy voice, “an eeeevvvvil stepmother” (Banks).
It always helps if you haven't seen the superior original and more so here because of the now clichéd twist (handled relatively well) that attempts to lift most horror movies above the sub-standard. The Uninvited though still manages to get a few things right.
It suffers from the lack of “scuzz” that creates the all too polished modern horror landscape. Surely it was scarier when we couldn't make out everything on the screen? But there are a couple of genuinely creepy moments that require the imaginary cinema duvet to be pulled over the eyes. Most involve the contorted bodies dominating Anna's dreams, twisted corpses that scuttle across a bedroom floor or spasm towards our young heroine. It may be derisory but at least it's not an ebony-haired Asian girl with a severe case of rickets.
On the non-supernatural side the acting is a mixed bag. Rydell is bland. We know she is meant to be depressed and confused, but that's no excuse to look like you have wind for 90 minutes. Kebbel on the other hand is a spunky alternative to the dour scenario her family finds itself in and may be one to watch out for. David Strathairn is expectedly solid, but it's the against type casting of comedy queen Elizabeth Banks that raises the most eyebrows, and justifiably so. Here she struggles to be the foreboding stepmother on which to hang the horror.
This is by-the-book, workmanlike filmmaking par excellence, and even before proceedings have descended into a Home Alone style, through the window and down the drainpipe romp, the 90 minute running time will have felt much longer.
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