Les Intrus

I typically find newer horror movies to be cheesy, humorous, boring, and above all: not scary. You know that feeling you get when a movie starts to take its toll on your patients and causes your eyes to wander around the theater? You don't get that at all with this film. This movie grabbed me from the beginning and refused to let go. The film's music score is extremely effective at creating a suspenseful and uneasy viewer sensation, which I think deserves full appreciation for the movie's ghostly flavor. Without any doubt, appropriate music in a movie is like butter on popcorn. Would Jaws scare you without the renowned theme music? The cast was nothing less then superb. Emily Browning was perfect at playing the "sad, quiet girl with horrible visions" role. I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, but the ending of this movie really twists your mind and makes you think. I found it to be an adequate yet abrupt closure for the story despite how it is following a certain trend with recent horror movie endings.

For my part, I find it excellent. I who usually hate horror movies, I really enjoyed The Uninvited, because it's not a horror movie, precisely. I would rather say that it's a thriller, particularly well done, which features Emily Browning, an amazing actress who plays well throughout the film. All the supporting roles are equally compelling, from the creepy stepmother to the protective sister and the ambiguous father.

But the real strenght of The Uninvited is its ending : completely unexpected, it is very well brought and remains logical with everything that has been showed to us previously, if we watch the whole thing again. A very nice surprise for me! 8/10.

Anna (Emily Browning) returns home from a psychiatric institution after her suicide attempt. She's been struggling after her mother's death in a fire. Her mother was ill and the caretaker Rachel Summers (Elizabeth Banks) is now her father Steven (David Strathairn)'s girlfriend. Her sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) is convinced that Rachel killed their mother. She keeps having visions of 3 little kids. Her boyfriend Matt is killed presumably in an accident after she sees him in a vision. Her father is getting remarried to Rachel. The girls discover that Rachel is using a false identity. Anna suspects her to be Mildred Kemp who killed the 3 kids in her vision and disappeared.

Emily Browning is great as a distressed teen and I like everybody in this. There is a moody ghostly sense through out the movie. This boils down to the ending. I completely understand if some people throw up their hands at the final twists. I personally scratched my head at first. In the end, I accepted it and like the movie. I could have easily gone the other way.

While many people are just so put off by this film for many reasons, I was very surprised by how it actually turned out.

Although the original, "A Tale of Two Sisters", was an epic movie that delivered certain moods and feelings that this movie (and most other films to date) couldn't quite capture, this film was still just great.

One thing to understand was that this movie was completely westernized. Remakes such as "The Grudge" take place in Japan, but the main characters are replaced with an American or European cast, and sometimes the story just doesn't quite fit the way it should with that type of a cast. In this film, the "A Tale of Two Sisters" story is completely translated into an American setting, in the north in a small town. The characters are tweaked a little to accommodate the new setting, and so are some of the scenes and plot lines. This is where many fans of the original get upset and get their panties in a bunch.

If this film was truly remade true to the original, it would just be the original film itself being remade 5 years later with the same cast and same script. This film is honestly one of the best Asian-horror remakes that has been made in the past 3 or 4 years if not ever. The cast gives solid performances and there were little or no plot holes. There were actually less plot holes in this film than the original. Of course I liked the original more, but I'm just saying this film executed certain things that the first film didn't, just like the first film executed certain things this film didn't. They are meant to be similar but different, and that is what makes both of them worth seeing.

8.5/10

The Uninvited (2009) is a movie that I recently watched on HBOMAX. The storyline follows a traumatized young lady who returns home from a psychological institution for the first time since her mom dramatically died and her dad remarried. She returns home to a hostile relationship with her stepmother, run ins with the ghost of her mom and a sister that just doesn't give an damn. Things get worse as more and more ghosts from her past return.

This movie is codirected by Charles and Thomas Guard, who also codirected Round about Five, and stars Emily Browning (Sucker Punch), Arielle Kebbel (Grudge 2), Elizabeth Banks (The Hunger Games), David Strathairn (The Firm) and Jesse Moss (Tucker and Dale vs Evil).

This is one of those movies where you wanted a little more from it. The cast is really good and everyone delivers a solid performance. The ladies in the cast are gorgeous. The plot has some good twists and turns. The end is clever and was pretty smart. My only complaint is the horror elements are limited and the jump scares were cheesy.

Overall, with a story this good if they could have ratcheted up the horror elements this could have been a gem. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it once.