The Uninvited (2009 film)


The Uninvited is a 2009 American psychological horror film directed by the Guard Brothers and starring Emily Browning, Elizabeth Banks, Arielle Kebbel, and David Strathairn. It is a remake of the 2003 South Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters, which is in turn one of several film adaptations of the Korean folk tale Janghwa Hongryeon jeon. The film received mixed reviews.

Plot

Anna has been in a psychiatric institution for ten months, following her suicide attempt after her terminally ill mother died in a boathouse fire. Now, she is being discharged and has no memory of the actual fire, though she is frequently plagued by nightmares from that night. She is picked up by her father, Steven, a writer who has dedicated his latest book to Anna and her sister Alex.
At home, Anna reunites with Alex, with whom she is close. The sisters stand against Steven's girlfriend Rachel, who had been their mother's live-in nurse. Alex criticizes Steven for sleeping with Rachel while the girls' mother was still alive and sick in bed. Anna describes to Alex how scenes from her dreams have started happening while she is awake. The sisters become convinced that the hallucinations are messages from their mother, telling them that she was murdered by Rachel so Rachel could be with their father.
Anna catches up with her old boyfriend Matt, who tells her that he saw what happened the night of her mother's death. The two secretly plan to meet that night, but he fails to show up and she returns home. In her room, she has a ghastly hallucination of him and the next morning, his dead body is pulled out of the water, his back broken just the way Anna saw it in her vision. The police state he fell and drowned.
After the sisters are unable to find a record of Rachel with the State Nursing Association, they conclude she is actually Mildred Kemp, a nanny who killed three children she was paid to care for because she was obsessed with their widowed father. They try to warn Steven, but he ignores their concerns. The girls try to gather evidence against Rachel to show the police but Rachel catches them and sedates Alex. Anna escapes and goes to the local police station, but they do not believe her and call Rachel to take her home.
As Rachel puts Anna in bed, Anna sees Alex in the doorway with a knife before passing out. When she wakes up, she finds that Alex has killed Rachel and thrown her body in the dumpster. When their father arrives home, Anna explains that Rachel tried to murder them but Alex saved them by killing her. Confused and in panic, Steven tells Anna that Alex died in the fire along with their mother. Anna looks down to find that she is holding the bloody knife rather than her sister's hand.
Anna finally remembers what happened on the night of the fire: after catching her father and Rachel having sex, Anna filled a watering can from a gasoline tank in the boathouse and carried it toward the house, intending to burn it down. However, she spilled a trail of gasoline that ignited when a candle fell over. Her mother was killed in the resulting explosion, as was Alex. It is revealed that Anna has symptoms of both severe schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. Flashbacks reveal that Anna had been hallucinating Alex since she left the institution: this is why none of the characters had ever responded to Alex's presence; only Anna's. She remembers killing Matt by letting him fall off the cliff because he saw what Anna had done. She also remembers killing Rachel, who was actually a kind person; Anna had imagined her callousness.
The next morning, as police arrest Anna for murder, they question Steven who reveals that Rachel changed her last name years ago to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend.
At the mental institution, Anna is welcomed back by the patient across from her, whose name plate says "Mildred Kemp".

Cast

In 2002, producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald produced the hit horror film The Ring, a remake of the Japanese film Ring. They subsequently produced the film's successful sequel The Ring Two in 2005. Since first starting this new cycle of Asian horror film adaptations, Parkes and MacDonald searched for a project they felt was as ingeniously conceived and executed as The Ring, and finally found it when producer Roy Lee brought the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters to their attention.
When A Tale of Two Sisters played in US theaters, directors Tom and Charlie Guard had acquired the English language remake rights. The Guard Brothers had previously directed commercials and short films, and wanted to expand into feature films.
In June 2006, DreamWorks announced that a deal had been set up for the US version of A Tale of Two Sisters. The new film was a presentation of DreamWorks and Cold Spring Pictures, and was produced by Parkes, MacDonald and Lee. The screenplay was written by Craig Rosenberg, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard.
In early 2008, the film, whose working title had been A Tale of Two Sisters, was renamed to The Uninvited.
The film was released in North American theaters on January 30, 2009.

Shooting location

Although the film is set in Maine, it was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. Most of the film was shot at one location, a waterfront property on British Columbia's Bowen Island, a short ferry ride west from mainland Vancouver.
Producer Walter F. Parkes said, of the shooting location:
It is reported that a two-story boathouse in the film was built on the property overlooking the water just for several scenes. The cold water is rough and unappealing; it is a greenish-gray that crashes constantly and does not invite swimming.

Casting

was hired to portray the lead Anna Ivers. She had originally auditioned for the role of Alex. The film is rated PG-13, and is visually less gory and bloody than the original film. Elizabeth Banks plays the role of the stepmother, Rachel. Banks based her character Rachel on Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. "It was very important to me that every line reading I gave could be interpreted two ways," says Banks of her role, "so that when you go back through the movie you can see that." David Strathairn plays the concerned father of the two girls. Arielle Kebbel plays Anna's older sister, Alex Ivers.

Music

The original score for the film was composed by Christopher Young, who recorded it with a 78-piece orchestra and 20-person choir. His score features a glass harmonica, and the Yale Women's Slavic Chorus.

Reception

Critical reception

reported that 31% out of 128 surveyed critics gave favorable reviews, with an average rating of 4.5/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "The Uninvited is moody and reasonably involving, but suffers from predictable plot twists." Metacritic assigned a weighted average score of 43 out of 100 based on 24 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average" reception. Bloody Disgusting gave the film 6/10. In Yahoo! Movies Critical Response, the average professional critical rating was a C according to 11 reviews.

Box office

On its opening day, the film grossed $4,335,000 and ranked #2 in the box office.
It got $10,512,000 for its opening weekend, set on the third place, opened in 2,344 theaters with an average $4,485 per theatre.
The film spent nine weeks in US cinemas, and finished with a total gross of $28,596,818. It did fairly moderately for a horror film in the US markets.
The film was released on March 26, 2009, in Australia, and it opened at the fifth position, averaging $3,998 at 121 sites, for a gross of A$483,714. The second week it dipped 29%.