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(More customer reviews)The Uninvited begins with our protagonist, Anna, in a mental ward after dealing with the emotional trauma of losing her mother in a freak fire. As the film begins, her psychiatrist believes she is ready to go back into the real world and she is allowed to move back in with her father and her older sister, Alex. Unfortunately, father is now seeing Rachel, a nurse who was in charge of Anna's mother. This weird situation is further complicated by the fact that Anna is becoming more and more convinced that her mom wasn't killed in a freak accident...maybe she was murdered.
So if you have watched ghost movies over the last ten or so years, you basically know this film. It hits all of the major plot points, has a couple requisite twists and throws weird scares at you (it is based on a Korean film, you know). I expected all of this. I even expected one twist that I thought was revealed very early on. Even so, the ending still surprised me and I have to say that this film was classy in telling a familiar story. The truth is, there hasn't really been a genre-changing film in the ghost story genre for awhile now. The Uninvited is no different. So, what is important is not what is being told (as there's nothing new under the sun), but how it's told.
Here The Uninvited soars where a lot of recent ghost stories (Unborn, for example) have failed. The storytelling is far classier than it has any right to be, the script is well-written and convincing and the actors are terrific. Emily Browning, playing Anna, practically carries the weight of the film on her slender shoulders. With her forlorn and innocent gaze, you really start to feel for her increasingly desperate plight. Meanwhile, her sister is played perfectly by Arielle Kebbel who brings a sexy older sibling charm to the proceedings. And then there's Elizabeth Banks, playing the stepmother who might not be all she says she is.
All of this is pitted against a murder mystery or two and wrapped up in a perfect bow. There's not a dull moment in the film, the scares actually startled me, even when I expected them and some of the ghostly hauntings could give the weird factor of The Grudge/Ring a run for their money. It's effective and very well done.
I definitely recommend going to see it. The Korean film, A Tale of Two Sisters, is definitely in my scope now, to see how it stacks up. Go see The Uninvited if you're in the mood for a fun, classy and, yes, sometimes scary ghost story.
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