L'adolescente Anna sort de l'hôpital psychiatrique où elle a été internée après avoir tenté de se suicider suite au choc de la mort violente de sa mère malade. De retour chez elle, la jeune fille constate que son père va maintenant se marier avec l'ex-infirmière de sa mère et le comportement complaisant de cette dernière lui semble plutôt suspect, ce qui est confirmé par Alex, la sœur aînée d'Anna, qui éprouve une profonde antipathie pour la femme. De plus, Anna commence à recevoir des visites terrifiques de l'esprit de sa mère morte et d'une mystérieuse et inquiétante petite fille aux cheveux rouges qui cherchent à l'avertir d'un danger imminent.
Announced for a long time, it arrives with considerable delay on the schedule, the remake of «Two Sisters», a Korean ghost story signed by Ji-woon Kim and belonging to the golden age of Eastern horror.
It is rare that a remake from the United States of a product from the Land of the Rising Sun turns out to be qualitatively valid; usually, these are films made quickly and in a hurry, directed without personality and acted by the first TV star available between the pause of one season and another. With «The Uninvited», one can breathe a sigh of relief because the result is far superior to the average of similar productions; indeed, one can quite comfortably consider this ghost story a great film in every respect, independently of its declaredly commercial nature and comparisons with the original film.
At the helm of the direction, we find the almost debuting Guard brothers who show that they possess great talent. The entire film, in fact, is directed with great skill and maturity that is rarely noticed in debut works: the camera moves in a fluid and elegant way and manages to effectively emphasize the rare but well-aimed scary scenes. And it is the «scary factor» that is a winning point of «The Uninvited», since some somewhat predictable scenes (see the ghost in the kitchen) are alternated with others really well conceived that do not make one miss the already terrifying «apparitions» of the Korean film. The specter of the mother, with her wrinkled and cadaverous face, announced by the ring of the doorbell that she wears on her wrist, is a fine example of a well-executed boogeyman (woman, in this case), once again distant from the «spiritual» Asian iconography to which the film could have inevitably drawn, with a completely reformulated look for the occasion. This and other factors manage to give «The Uninvited» its own personality, a specificity that, once again, is able to justify the making of a remake of a recent film that goes beyond the now predictable cultural adaptation.
What is unfortunately lacking in «The Uninvited» is a real quid that could make the film long remembered by the public. The excellent packaging and the presence of quite successful scenes are not enough to make a story, admittedly not very original (independent of the remake factor), certainly well written but which in practice does not add much to the genre to which it belongs. Moreover, there is the aggravating circumstance for those who have already seen «Two Sisters» of knowing how the film evolves, including the twist, even if the Guard brothers have worked with a file and a smoothing machine to make the narrative more fluid, charge the final climax with more emphasis and add an intriguing investigative subplot that for some aspects can recall the story told in the thriller «The Stepfather » (by the way, an imminent remake for the latter as well!).
Positive note also regarding the cast led by the young Emily Browning («Ghost Ship»; «Lemony Snicket » «A Series of Unfortunate Events») in the role of the protagonist Anna, a very interesting face definitely suitable for the part, supported by Arielle Kebbel («Reeker » «Between Life and Death»; «The Grudge 2») in the role of the sister Alex and by Elizabeth Banks («Slither») in that of the ambiguous stepmother.
«The Uninvited» is therefore an interesting product, inexplicably neglected by the Italian distribution, which probably has the flaw of not really leaving a mark but which carves out a place of honor among the best remakes of Eastern horrors made in the post-«The Ring» era.
Worth seeing.
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