Delayed Reaction: The Uninvited

Premise: A girl returns from a stay at a mental hospital after an attempted suicide and comes to believe that her new step mother has nefarious intentions.

Do you know "The Game"? You know, the one you lose by thinking about it. The one that we both just lost because we thinking about it right now? That's how I feel talking about The Uninvited. So, this Reaction is really for people who have already seen it or don't care at all about it. I have no idea how people actually reviewed this movie when it was released. That's because this movie works best if you think it is incompetent. I only watched this because I was curious what this horror movie starring Emily Browning, Arielle Kebbell, and Elizabeth Banks was. I knew nothing else about it. That's for the best. I treated most of this movie like a lazy studio horror movie that was ripping off What Lies Beneath. I kept assuming it was pretty bad which turned out to be the best way to watch it. The big twist at the end took me completely by surprise. I didn't even suspect that the sister was really dead. I didn't notice that only Browning's character ever actually talked to her. The movie plays fair but it plays dirty. It has the sister talk to other people in ways where it makes sense that they'd ignore her.

Now, I don't know if the twist about the sister being dead would've worked if I thought the movie was savvy enough for a real twist. I would've either sniffed it out or at least been waiting for a twist. Instead, I was side-swiped, which was really cool. I often say that I love that my brain doesn't watch movies like puzzles. I'm only ever trying to "solve" a movie when I'm not liking it, and still I'm not very good at it. So, twists work on me a lot, and that makes me happy. Like a lot of twist movies though, The Uninvited's twist only works because I didn't know to expect it. I'm still looking for the right wording in these Reactions to say "Don't read this" but not clue anyone into the fact that there is a twist.

The cast is pretty good. It's made in that generic mid-2000s style like Hide n' Seek or The Amityville Horror remake. I can't describe it. There's just too much polish. Like the studio dimmed the lighting on a RomCom, added a spookier score, and mixed the sound more harshly. I can't say the twist makes up for how anonymous the movie otherwise felt. I think the movie shoots itself in the foot when it does a flashback to all the scenes where they leave clues about the sister not being real. Sure, show her killing the boy she liked and the stepmother since we didn't see those before. Show the flashback to how the mother and sister died. Don't remind the audience of that scene of them talking in the bathtub or the sister yelling at the dad who is sitting there silently. If you leave those out, crazies like me would probably rewatch the movie at some point to find all the clues. I still might. I did it for The Sixth Sense, although The Sixth Sense is a much better movie than The Uninvited.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend