Product Description

FOLLOWING THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF THEIR MOTHER, SISTERS ANNA AND ALEX BECOME ENTANGLED IN A DEADLY BATTLE OF WILLS WHEN THEIR FATHER BECOMES ENGAGED TO RACHEL, THEIR MOTHERS FORMER CARETAKER.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3617 in DVD
• Brand: Paramount
• Released on: 2009-04-28
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Amazon.com
The china-doll features of Emily Browning (A Series of Unfortunate Events) are the eerie center of The Uninvited, an American remake of the wildly popular Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters. Browning stars as Anna, a young girl being released from a mental hospital following the harrowing death of her mother. But when she returns home, she discovers her father (David Strathairn) has fallen under the sexual spell of her mother's former nurse, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks, Zack and Miri Make a Porno), despite the open hostility of Anna's sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel, John Tucker Must Die). When Anna sees the ghost of her mother point at Rachael and scream "Murder!", Anna and Alex begin to investigate Rachael's past and make some unsettling discoveries. The Uninvited combines two horror trends: Twist endings (in this case, more than one) and recycling Asian horror images (particularly wet, crawling corpses). There's nothing particularly outstanding about The Uninvited, but it's superior to more lackluster Asian horror remakes like One Missed Call. The three lead actresses all have strangely glossy faces that look molded out of plastic, which adds a perhaps unintentional layer of creepiness. --Bret Fetzer




Stills from The Uninvited (Click for larger image)

Customer Reviews

Classy, fun and, yes, kind of scary
The Uninvited begins with our protagonist, Anna, in a mental ward after dealing with the emotional trauma of losing her mother in a freak fire. As the film begins, her psychiatrist believes she is ready to go back into the real world and she is allowed to move back in with her father and her older sister, Alex. Unfortunately, father is now seeing Rachel, a nurse who was in charge of Anna's mother. This weird situation is further complicated by the fact that Anna is becoming more and more convinced that her mom wasn't killed in a freak accident...maybe she was murdered.

So if you have watched ghost movies over the last ten or so years, you basically know this film. It hits all of the major plot points, has a couple requisite twists and throws weird scares at you (it is based on a Korean film, you know). I expected all of this. I even expected one twist that I thought was revealed very early on. Even so, the ending still surprised me and I have to say that this film was classy in telling a familiar story. The truth is, there hasn't really been a genre-changing film in the ghost story genre for awhile now. The Uninvited is no different. So, what is important is not what is being told (as there's nothing new under the sun), but how it's told.

Here The Uninvited soars where a lot of recent ghost stories (Unborn, for example) have failed. The storytelling is far classier than it has any right to be, the script is well-written and convincing and the actors are terrific. Emily Browning, playing Anna, practically carries the weight of the film on her slender shoulders. With her forlorn and innocent gaze, you really start to feel for her increasingly desperate plight. Meanwhile, her sister is played perfectly by Arielle Kebbel who brings a sexy older sibling charm to the proceedings. And then there's Elizabeth Banks, playing the stepmother who might not be all she says she is.

All of this is pitted against a murder mystery or two and wrapped up in a perfect bow. There's not a dull moment in the film, the scares actually startled me, even when I expected them and some of the ghostly hauntings could give the weird factor of The Grudge/Ring a run for their money. It's effective and very well done.

I definitely recommend going to see it. The Korean film, A Tale of Two Sisters, is definitely in my scope now, to see how it stacks up. Go see The Uninvited if you're in the mood for a fun, classy and, yes, sometimes scary ghost story.

Meh...
As far as PG-13 rated remakes of Asian horror films go, you could do a whole lot worse than what you find with The Uninvited. That is, until you actually hold it up to the film that it was remade from, the Korean horror smash A Tale of Two Sisters. Emily Browning stars as Anna, a teenage girl who returns home from a stay in a mental institution, and along with her sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) come to distrust and suspect that their father's (David Strathairn) new girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks), who was the former nurse for their ailing mother, played a role in their mother's fiery demise. There's a good amount of gloomy atmosphere to find in The Uninvited, and even some twists as well, but none of which that amounts to a whole lot compared to what's found in A Tale of Two Sisters, which is far, far superior in terms of shocks and a dynamite ending. The scares here are predictable and, well, unscary to say the least, and it's hard to decide who comes off as creepier, Browning or Banks. Other than having Arielle Kebbel in a bikini, there isn't a whole lot to really recommend The Uninvited. While it isn't as terrible as PG-13 rated Asian horror remakes usually tend to be, in the end you're better off checking out the original film it is remade from if you want to see a truly haunting, psychological, and truly scary horror flick.

Emily Browning is the best thing about it
This movie was a little creepy and twisted and I liked Emily Browning (A Series of Unfortunate Events). She should be in more movies. She's a good young actress but this movie wasn't really worthy of the talented cast. David Strathaim's was especially wasted, anyone could have played the father. He doesn't even have that much screen time. In closing, it's a pretty decent movie and the end did give me chills I admit.