The death of her mother affects badly on her, as she tries to commit suicide, the thing that leads her father to send her into a mental institution, Anna, after recovery returns home, where she finds her father has married, the thing that inspires her revenge, as she thinks that her mother in law involved in the death of her mother, so she begins to collect evidences against her.
It's a slick, bloodless affair that's neither as suggestive as the classic general-audiences ghost stories of the past, nor as intense as a hard-R would allow it to be.
Take a 'concept', strip it bare of all layers of meaning, remake it with added genre cliches and scantily clad American teens in order to a 'wider audience'. Voila.
The only genuinely startling moments come via the deafening sound effects that accompany a large roast hitting the floor and Anna scraping metal hangers along a clothing rack.
As in the original, the film slyly manipulates the audience's perspective, and a brilliantly filmed climactic 'reveal' marks this British duo as a pair to watch.
The Uninvited may strike even viewers who don't know the original as disarmingly familiar.
Wesley Morris
Boston Globe
January 30, 2009
The Uninvited is a mess of styles and stolen ideas, including a plot twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan roll his eyes and dialogue straight from a CW scene generator.
