Tonight’s horror is Charles and Thomas Guard’s “The Uninvited” from 2009. This is a remake of the South Korean Horror “A Tale of Two Sisters” from 2003. I haven’t seen the original, though in researching this I did find out the differences in the plot and they are substantial. This version is written by the team of Craig Rosenberg, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard. The Uninvited is a twist movie that hinges on two specific twists. That’s a bold strategy, let’s see if it pays off.
A Tale of Two Sisters.
The movie stars Emily Browning as “Anna”, a young girl just returning from a stint in a Mental Hospital. Primary support is from Arielle Kebbel as “Alex” her sister, David Strathairn as her father “Steven” and Elizabeth Banks as “Rachel”, Steven’s girlfriend and the former nurse to his wife and Anna’s mother. Anna was in the Mental Hospital due to a suicide attempt following the death of her Mother in a fire. She can’t remember what happened that night and is clearly still traumatized by it.
Anna dislikes and is deeply suspicious of Rachel. After being haunted by dreams of her mother and strange dead children and at the apparent encouragement of her sister she begins to investigate the events of that night and Rachel in particular and finds a lot of things that don’t add up. Eventually she confronts Rachel, who only gets angry with her and threatens her with going back to the Mental Hospital. Believing Rachel is actually a serial killer that murder another family and fearing for her life and that of her sisters Anna becomes desperate. But is everything what it seems?.
The Trouble With Twists.
There are two problems with building a movie around a twist (Or in this case two of them). First of all, the viewer may guess the twist. Secondly, when you watch the movie a second time you will know the twist and that will significantly alter the perception of every view other than the first. If the movie doesn’t work with the twist revealed then it is a disposable movie meant to be viewed just once. This movie had two twists, one revolving around Anna’s sister Alex and the other the cause of the fire that took her mothers life.
With these particular twists, one was incredibly easy to guess and yet played out as if it would be a shock to everyone. On my second viewing (Done while writing this) it is only more obvious and doesn’t really add much my perception since I had figured it out early first time around. After figuring out the first one, the second twist lays itself out pretty bare. This is the problem here. Had the first one not been so obvious, then the repeat viewing would have exposed how the second was laid out for the viewer. It would have made the film seem quite clever. Sadly though, the sister twist was so obvious it instead makes the film seem pretentious.
–SPOILERS–
Part of the problem here is we’ve seen this kind of twist done before and far better. When you are exposed to a trope done well, it makes it very easy to be critical of it. In some ways it could be argued that it sort of kills the trope off. It also tends to lead to an increased popularity of that trope. I’ve been dancing around the specifics here so for this section I’m hitting SPOILERS now.
The trope in particular is the imaginary friend/multiple personality trope. Anna’s sister Alex is actually dead and the version she sees is basically a reflection of herself. But the lack of two way interaction with others, the way she appears and disappears and the way her entire existence revolves around her sister makes this very obvious. The more successful versions of this trope actually do have the imaginary version interact with people, but in reality it is still the main character doing that interaction. With clever writing you can cover up that the other characters think they are talking to the same character. Here though they they leave Alex on the peripheral of everything in a way that means she never seems real.
The most famous example of the trope is the excellent “Fight Club” from 1999. But it wasn’t until “Mr. Robot” in 2015 that someone found a way to bring the trope back and breath life into it. The trick they found there was in recognizing that the viewers would have figured it out and actually working that into the story. Now those were clever. This one, just thinks it is.
Missed Opportunities
To be fair, there are some interesting aspects about this movie, but sadly they aren’t examined particularly closely. The main one for me was how many of Anna’s delusions came from interactions in a mental hospital with another patient. Which reminds me of an idea I had for a sequel to the movie “Joker”. In that idea, Arthur/Joker would be in the Asylum relaying stories about former inmates to Harley Quinzel, those stories reflecting the other Batman rogues gallery villains. But by the conclusion you realize that Arthur told the stories to those inmates and this actually led to the stories becoming part of their own delusions.
Effectively he was creating the Rogues Gallery through interaction with them. This isn’t what we will get for the Joker sequel of course, but I liked my idea and I see elements of that idea here in the brief presence of the “Mildred Kemp” character. They don’t really do anything with that though. They also don’t explore the ghost aspect, with it just turning out to be delusional instead. It’s worth noting the Korean movie does explore this and had they followed suit they would have avoided the issues with their over reliance on the twists.
Conclusion.
Outside the plot, the movie is actually pretty well made. The musical score increases the tension and does a good job of attempting to manipulate the viewers response. The acting is actually very good and several of the creepier visuals are well put together. Ultimately though there is not much that can compensate for the failure of the twist that has the entire movie hinge on the viewer buying it. As a result this is only a 5/10. The original South Korean film had a radically different ending and had they remained faithful to that version, they would have avoided most of the pitfalls this movie fell in. That’s Hollywood remakes for you!
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