Mike's tale of two reviews: Another UNINVITED remake!

In The Uninvited we have yet another horror remake, that most cost-efficient of films and the only area of international trade not currently hitting rock bottom. Rather than intersperse my review with comparisons and so forth, I've decided that the easiest way to deal with it is to split my review into two parts. For those of you who don't give a damn whether it was the idea of some guy in Korea before it was this, skip the last three paragraphs. For those who know and love Kim Jee-Woon's A Tale of Tour Sisters skip the first four. Now, on with the opinions... Anna Rydell has been in a mental hospital. We don't know how long for, but it seems like she was sent there after the death of her mother which, as you might expect, hither pretty hard. But far from returning to the happy home where she can receive the rest and support she needs, she returns to a place where something is very very wrong. You see, although her sister is upbeat and pleased to see her, her father is uncomfortable about how Anna will deal with his new girlfriend. But then I would be worried too if my new girlfriend was also the woman who nursed my dead mother and has a shady past that seems to get shadier by the men. The beauty of the film is that it does not just rely on 'scares'. The moment a ghost appears, or a glass falling from a shelf. There are nasty moments that have you jumping out of your seat (they couldn't omit them altogether could they?) but the parts that send a real chill down your spine are the psychological twists and turns that litter the plot as we steadily advance to the truth about the mysterious happenings, and finally understand what it was that drove Anna to the mental asylum. Emily Browning does a great job in the lead role as Anna, displaying a rare talent at acting like a normal teenager might in adverse circumstances. Likewise Elizabeth Banks depicts creepy stepmother Rachael without resorting to the evil stepmother from Cinderella (it could easily have been done with some moments in this script). Arielle Kebbel has little to offer as sassy sister Alex, strangely unperturbed by her mother's death she mostly has to stand around in skimpy clothes and make sarcastic teenage comments anyway - so it's no big drain on the overall effect of the movie. Overall, The Uninvited is a neatly put-together spook-a-thon that succeeds in dishing out plenty of scares without using lots of special effects (none of those CGI upside-down headed dogs as in The Unborn, or elaborately designed wounds on show in Martyrs) whilst creating a genuinely tense and frightening chiller. The twists and turns that throw you around throughout make a good job of delivering a surprise ending, which provides a satisfying payoff to an enjoyable ride. Comparing it to Kim Jee-Woon's original shows it up for the shallow, bland film it is. Enjoyable for a Friday night movie, it is easily forgettable and has lost all of the original psychological density applied liberally in A Tale of Two Sisters. The change to the ending is the most telling contrast, with that of The Uninvited scripted just to pack a punch and get that 'Oh! Cool' reaction, whereas A Tale of Two Sisters is so messed up and affective that just writing about it makes me shiver. In many senses, the changes just illustrate the standard approach of the horror remake machine: take a 'concept', strip it bare of all layers of meaning, remake it with added genre cliches and scantily clad American teens in order to a 'wider audience' (as if we're all too stupid to appreciate the original). Another thing those other Kim Jee-Woon fans may notice is that the cinematography is far less rich. That might seem like a fickle comment, but Kim creates a strong sense of place in the house of his version that is sorely lacking in The Uninvited despite the remake using similar wallpaper in a minimal effort to replicate its predecessor. What's more, the visual flair dedicated to the scares really makes a difference, and once you've seen the ghostly apparition appear to Soo-mi in the bedroom you will not be able to appreciate the attempt to recreate it. In short, if you've seen the original this is not worth watching. It's a pale re-imagining of the concept, the result of which is an above-avergae but uninspired movie which lacks most of the elements that were so exciting and involving in the original. Add to that the obvious loss of impact that comes with knowing most of the key plot points and you have a film that you really shouldn't pay heard-earned money for. The Uninvited opens in the U.K. on April 25th.