The Uninvited DVD Review

"The Uninvited" reviews

DVD

The Uninvited

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2009-09-17 11:27:07

Rating

3/5

Provider

DVD Review

Based on 2004 Korean chiller A Tale Of Two Sisters, The Uninvited is a surprisingly tense Hollywood adaptation that skirts past its occasional hokey and B-movie moments mainly because of the high calibre cast and its genuinely shocking twist.

It's a film that has you re-watching it again to see how exactly the filmmakers did it, leaving you kicking yourself that you didn’t figure it out earlier.

Lemony Snicket's Emily Browning plays Anna, a young girl who has been released from psychiatric care following a failed suicide attempt after the death of her mother.

However, she is stunned to find that her dad (the always dependable David Strathairn) has become involved in a relationship with her mother’s former nurse – Elizabeth Banks, channeling the screen crazies from the likes of Single White Female and Fatal Attraction to admirable effect.

Seeking comfort in her resentful sister, the pair discover that their future stepmother may have some big skeletons in her closet.

It's lacks the dark sexual subtext of the original and it sometimes falls back on the clichés that litter Hollywood horror films of late – but Browning and Areille Kebbel (the older sister) have a cute, believable chemistry as the warring sisters who bond over a common enemy.

The special features include an alternate ending that doesn’t add much to the original, while the making of Unlocking The Uninvited is your typical gushing, back slapping piece of filler that is all too common on DVD extras.