At short last, The Uninvited comes to DVD. And this is what you look like caring. You’re extremely smart because you skipped this in theaters along with everybody else. If you’re bored enough to WANT to watch this, be even smarter and let someone else be the dumbass that rents a movie not horrible enough to be reviled, but just uninteresting enough to be an inconsequential January blip on your movie radar. You didn’t bother watching this because the trailer made it look like yet another (sigh) PG-13 (strike one) remake (strikes two and three) of a halfway decent J-horror movie albino-washed and scoured for your protection making it barely scarier than that Jonas Brothers movie that came out last March.
Trust your initial instinct and avoid it on DVD, as if you weren’t going to do that already. In fact, you can probably wait another week and it’ll hit the $5 bin in your local video store. What the hell am I saying? All your local video stores are out of business…
Fun fact: The time it took you to read that opening paragraph is about 15 seconds longer than The Uninvited’s theatrical release.
Anna (Emily Browning) is a girl with typical teenage girl concerns. She’s been remanded to a psyche ward because she put slashy X marks on her wrists with a razor. Silly girl, doesn’t she know that if you want to really kill yourself you cut DOWN along the vein…unless of course this is a standard teeny CRY FOR HELP (shooting up a school would have cost a lot more and would have been deemed as just so 90’s). She was witness to her invalid mother dying. And not just any regular old death, but being blown up in a cottage as she was supposedly yelling for help, ringing her cowbell for someone to come and answer (if only she had more cowbell). Maybe dead mom was yelling something like “Help me because I don’t want to be blown up in this cottage with a full bedpan.” Or something like that, but we’ll never really know. Unless what mommy said is revealed to us in flashback montage fashion, but you’ll probably have turned the movie off to do something more exciting. Like dusting your Thomas Kinkade paintings. Or blogging about your Hibiscus.
Anna has recurring dreams of that fateful night, but she doesn’t exactly remember what happened. This is somehow seen as progress by her movie shrink (or her insurance is dwindling), so she’s allowed to return to her family (“Better food, crazier people”). That is, her family except for her dead mother. Cause of death: Getting blown the fuck up.
Daddy (David Strathairn, slumming in a paycheck part) seems to be taking mom blowing up as well as any grieving husband can. He’s had adequate help coping because he’s fucking his exploding wife’s ex-nurse Rachel (Elizabeth Banks, deftly delivering the line “I wiped old peoples’ asses”). More good news: He didn’t even have to give her that much of a raise and now he has a room free since Nurse Rachel is sharing his bed. Maybe his there is a silver lining after all: Free (or inexpensive) pussy and a room to rent.
Anna’s sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) has dealt with their mother’s explosion by getting drunk and spending all her time in bikini tops. Since this is a PG-13 movie she never really gets all that sloshed and the top, sadly enough, stays on, even in the stiff Maine winds.
Anna has suspicions about Rachel right off the bat, because it’s awfully convenient that Rachel would become daddy’s cock socket so relatively soon after mom exploded. Rachel has to be attracted to him because he’s so much older and is a successful novelist. Unless Rachel has ulterior motives. Maybe the explosion wasn’t an accident. Ya think?
Alex is only too happy to help because she’s such a clichéd rebellious 20-something playing a teen…and what else has she got to do because this movie’s already past the half-hour mark and you’re already falling asleep. This is where a topless shot or some lesbian experimentation might have kept your attention.
Like you weren’t thinking the same thing…
C’mon, Alex and Anna aren’t REAL sisters, they’re actors playing sisters in a bad horror movie, so that doesn’t count…and you’re sure as hell not paying attention to the story. Which is odd because the movie has nothing resembling an actual scare to distract you other than the fact that you’re probably wishing you rented Bride Wars but that bitch who waddled in front of you in the Redbox line got it instead…along with her 7th renting of Twilight in 10 days and a metric ton of Fiddle Faddle.
Anna’s also seeing her dead mother in dreams…along with a little red haired girl who keeps mouthing the words “You’re next” and “She’ll do it again”. Wonder what that could mean. Maybe Anna shouldn’t have left the nutbar saloon so early, as she’s also dreaming of mulchy corpses and bleeding doorways. Is Anna really crazy, or is mommy trying to warn her of something…like Stay Away From This Movie.
Only after some surreptitious digging do Alex and Anna find out a little more about Nurse Rachel. Like her name isn’t Rachel. Perhaps if they do a little more info spelunking they’ll find out she used to be a nurse to a family…with a little red haired girl. But that probably has nothing to do with the little red-haired girl that Anna’s been seeing in her dreams. That would be too much of a coincidence…if this were a good movie.
But since this isn’t…
What works with The Uninvited-
1) Arielle Kebbel and Emily Browning are well cast as sisters mainly because they actually look alike and have an ease with each other onscreen that, for their handful of scenes together, distract you from the fact that nothing in this movie has scared you in the least.
2) Okay, I was wrong. Alex gets to say “Oh…here comes the burrito,” which is pretty much the scariest part of the movie. If this ruins it for you and you now no longer want to see the movie…You’re very welcome and I’m glad I could be of some assistance.
3) Arielle Kebbel’s last major role was in the terrible Grudge 2 and Emily Browning was last seen in that weak Lemony Snicket movie with Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep. The Uninvited is an upgrade as it’s less crappy than those 2. Just barely.
4) PG-13 Pimpin’- It’s unintentionally funny to see local teenager Matt mack on Anna (“I love you and I have a condom”). You’re laughing at how stupid it is, but at least laugher’s a better reaction than the tedium you feel throughout the rest of the movie.
What doesn’t work…unless you’re an insomniac-
1) Judging by the trailers you’d think Elizabeth Banks would get the hammiest, juiciest part, the lone party favor of fun in this wake of dullness. But she doesn’t get any juicy dialogue to say, and what chances she as at scenery-chewing are wasted by limp delivery. Banks, as you know, is golden when it comes to comedy and even playing Laura Bush, but she’s about as devious and cutthroat as the St. Pauli girl. Face it, Grannypanties just isn’t that frightening.
2) Our Economy Sucks- When the great character actor and Oscar nominee David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck, The Bourne Ultimatum, Delores Claiborne) is forced to take such a nothing role simply to make ends meet. So fucking sad. A nice way of looking at it is that he got a working vacation to Maine because he doesn’t look like he’s trying very hard and his main motivation as he’s saying his lines is “lunch” or “beating off in my trailer.” As audience members forced to watch this…we feel you Dave. And make sure to mop up your trailer.
3) A dreadful ending that even by this movie’s much-lowered expectations (by the time you get to this part in the movie you’ll have abandoned all hope, lest ye enter this DVD into your player), makes no sense considering what you’ve seen before. You’ll replay scenes in your head and think “This movie is stupider than I gave it credit for.”
4) This movie was directed by Thomas and Charles Guard. I guess it’s reassuring to know that it took 2 people to make a movie so bereft of suspense, gore, or anything resembling fright. You get the feeling that if one of the Guard brothers actually shot something scary, the other one was there saying “No…that’s too scary. Let’s cut it out.” Mission accomplished, Tom and Chuck.
5) Want to test Ebert Einstein’s theory of movie relativity? Try watching this movie through it’s 87 minute run time without looking at your watch or counter at least twice that much. Or hoping that it’ll end 4 times that much. If you can do that you can also put a bullet through your head and feel it bounce off because you, my friend, are fucking invincible.
Overall. If someone you know accidentally rents this thinking it’s good and you are somehow forced to watch it, make sure you and your movie-challenged friend talk loud and long throughout the screening. Talk about your tax return. Talk about your dog Gordo’s newest bout with worms. I guarantee you it’ll be more interesting than what you’re watching. And if the words “PG-13” and “remake” don’t send you running far far away…don’t worry because I’m sure there’ll be 15 more of these types of “horror” releases this year that the discerning will make sure to ignore.
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