The Uninvited

There are plenty of films called THE UNINVITED but this has to be the worst to date. It's an independent production that looks and sounds like a ghost story but in fact is an aimless time waster, shot in a murky old house in the half-light for the most part, and charting the non-adventures of a young woman suffering from crippling agoraphobia.

THE UNINVITED is one of those films that makes zero sense to most people watching. There's a jumble of characters in the script, some bizarre, some very ordinary, and a handful of predictable scare scenes to make this a horror film, but other than that I didn't really have a clue what I was watching - or want to know. I don't mind a little ambiguity in cinema, but when a film is as wrong-headed as this one then it becomes an exercise in time wasting.

Ridiculous thing is, these two movies are within two years apart. Never seen that before! So here's the painful part! I saw the other version when it first came out. I remember it being an at least decent movie. So then I come across this on TV thinking it's the same one. Completely confused I sat watching this painful mess of a movie trying to figure out how I couldn't possibly have remembered " the uninvited" as being such a horrible movie. I mean in the making of this movie, the apparently did not get one little tiny bit of a care as to how horribly bad acting was being played out. Yes the movie storyline itself is horrible, but the acting is downright the worst I have ever seen! Watching this movie just made me angry! Apparently they knew that once the word got out that no one would waste their time with this movie. So the only way to get an audience was to steal the name of another movie that had came out at about the exact same time. Horrible movie! As bad as it gets!

THE UNINVITED is a movie with an intriguing premise that is handled in such an amateurish and unsatisfying way that by the time the end credits roll, one is left with confusion and displeasure. I originally gave this a score of 3, but then I noticed that there are a bunch of fishy things going on with it:

1. It appears the IMDB score is being gamed: there are, as of this writing, 385 perfect scores of 10/10 out of about 1.1k scores, making it by far the most frequent score. There is no way anybody but unethical filmmakers or paid shills would give this stinker a perfect score.

2. the Wikipedia page of this movie gives only comments from a single critic whose review, though containing criticism, is overall quite positive. What seems strange to me is that the critic praises the movie exactly for the aspects at which the movie particularly sucks. Also, the wiki seems as though written by a person who is biased in favor of the movie.

3. The title is identical to several other movies, including one much better known which was released in January 2009. IMDb gives the release date of this movie as 2008 (no exact date), but Amazon and Google play give it as 2010.

As I was watching the opening, I was taken aback by how amateurish this film seemed, but because I confused this with the 2009 movie, I decided to hang in there.

Though admittedly the premise of a woman suffering a strange phobia being terrorized by some kind of supernatural entity or Satanic cult is good, the movie manages to completely botch the execution. Apart from the amateurish direction, the movie is simply incoherent. I have watched thousands of movies, and I rarely feel like I wasted my time watching one, but on this I did.

I will make sure to strictly avoid any further movies from this director.

Like most of the reviews I too watched this based on the wrong movie information from satellite or the movie channel. I however did enjoy the movie. It was a scary psychological thriller movie. From the beginning they had you bond with the character by starting as a documentary about the main character's phobia. I watched it alone in the dark and it had me on edge of my seat through much of it. With close up shots, the dark lighting and scary music I thought it was much scarier than slasher flicks or very far fetched stories. The main character had a tough time with reality which made it scarier. It's plot was all over the place and confusing at times. I think much more could have been done with the plot but it was still entertaining to me.

I watched this movie on one of those days when you're ready to just sit back, relax and hopefully get treated to something really great that you just can't wait to tell somebody about. Well...it sucked, and now I feel obligated to sit in the reviewers corner with the other disenchanted viewers who kept waiting for something, anything, to happen in this film.

We generally give every film a fighting chance at least for the first 20 minutes right? Even if it's creeping along as the characters are developed and the plot is revealed,I can usually be fairly patient, but instead I found myself clock watching till it was almost over.

One of my biggest pet peeve's is the overuse of extreme darkness in a film, it's impossible to watch especially if you're watching a movie during the day, and there's ambient daylight falling on your TV. The only revealing thing about this situation is it shows you how many fingerprints are on your TV screen. With a four year old in the house, that means many.

As far as the characters I'm a little biased since I'm a huge Colin Hay fan, I wanted him to be good in this, but the script didn't allow it. Mr. Hay in my opinion is by far one of the most talented musicians out there however this script bound him to a mediocre at best character.

I thought the main character Lee was believable and as neutral in personality as Nick's, but perhaps it was the two like personalities,the overuse of darkness, and the "baby thing" thrown in at the last minute that left me with a feeling akin to buying that gotta have it gizmo thing from a late night info-mercial only to be sadly disappointed when you finally open the box.

All in all I think some good talent got sent straight to video on a slow train to nowhere.