Reviews

Review: The Uninvited

Downright clumsy

By SHAULA CLARK | February 4, 2009

2.0 Stars

VIDEO: The trailer for The Uninvited

So unrelentingly nerve-shredding is the Korean horror masterpiece A Tale of Two Sisters [Janghwa, Hongryeon], just the sight of the floral wallpaper from its opening credits makes my skin crawl. Its suffocating creepiness defies duplication — especially at the hands of Charles and Thomas Guard, whose Two Sisters remake, The Uninvited, marks their feature-length debut.

The set-up loosely mirrors the original's: after watching her mom die in a fire, teenager Anna (Emily Browning) has a mental breakdown, only to return from the nuthouse and find her father (a woefully squandered David Strathairn) shacked up with her mom's nurse, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks).

Tormented by rubbery phantoms, Anna attempts to expose her mother's death as a murder. Viewers coming to this remake cold might be wowed by its final twist, but compared to Two Sisters' elegant, labyrinthine mindfuck, The Uninvited is downright clumsy.

Related: Anti-depressant cinema, Review: Cold Souls, W. gets a B, More

Topics: Reviews , David Strathairn, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Banks, More

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