O Habitante Incerto

Felix is an architect reeling from the recent split from his long time girlfriend. Now living alone he in a very large house, he pesters his former lover daily, to come home. One night his door bell rings, Felix jumps up to answer it, hoping its her, but it's a stranger wanting to use his phone, Felix is reluctant to let him use it, but eventually gives in. He leaves the man to have some privacy and goes to his kitchen, where he waits for him to finish, after a short time, Felix returns to the phone to see what's keeping the man…but he's not there. Felix calls out to him, but there is no answer, he checks the house thoroughly thinking the man may have been out to rob him, but again there is no sign of him. Felix locks up the house and retires to bed. He then starts to hear faint noises around the house, could the man be still in the house? Again he finds nothing, this continues for a couple of days until finally he thinks he has cornered the intruder, he calls the police who come immediately and again find nobody. Is there an intruder at all or is Felix going slightly crazy or is there some other reason? The Uninvited Guest touches on a theme that would scare the living daylights out of anybody, an intruder in your own home, the twist here is that its pure mental torture on Felix as he doesn't know for sure that there is someone. The success of a film like this is first of all down to its script and it's a good one, its very clever and delivers plenty of twists in an otherwise simple plot line. The film is actually turned on its head halfway through with one of those clever twists I already mentioned that adds immensely to the thrilling ride, this is one of those films that keeps giving right until the end, I haven't quite analysed all the twists to see if they make any sense, but that doesn't matter as this is a classy enthralling film, one I didn't want to end.

Oh what a film - great story, great actors, great direction! Totally original, unpredictable and captivating, this movie proved to be the film experience of the month. Free of all kinds of clichés, it's a good example of a deep and disturbing old world thriller, which can be horrifying and funny at the same time. Perfectly written and grasping, it draws the viewer into a twisted world which could be surrounding each one us. Without stressing the paranoid aspect or attempting to brainwash the spectator, it manages to create a believably claustrophobic atmosphere and yet offer a very humane look upon loneliness and fear without introducing any evil characters or violent situations. I can't help but applaud the authors of this film and give it the full 10 points.

I like to imagine that money came in for this before the filmmaker had the chance to iron out the creases in the script and he just went ahead while the project was still hot and he could get it made.

It is half-way an interesting film, a more novel take on Hitchcock than we have seen from DePalma in ages; the prowling eye of the camera; the vertigo of assumed identities and deceived points-of-view; the projections in space of an obsessive mind. But a deeply flawed film that left me with a growing sense of dissatisfaction.

Our point-of-view is decidedly with a man who comes to think that someone else is hiding in his own house. The house itself is a spacious labyrinth of modern architecture so it's impossible to make sure; dark corners abound and the mind comes to cast in them its own shadows of doubt. The paranoid situation he's embroiled in becomes worse when he suspects that his ex is involved in some mysterious bargain where he is the victim.

The story has been set in motion long before though. There is a woman who has suffered a crippling accident and whose husband has grown distant from her, we get to find out about this later in the film when he does.

In the first house, physical space is what the mind fills in with its own chimeras. In the second house, it's what the mind fills with emotional pain, with distance as the space between hearts and affections.

It's in this second house that the man seeks refuge - where he comes to fill the space left blank by the missing husband - now by going into hiding himself, and so looking at his situation from the inverse point-of-view. Now we are what we were trying to apprehend in the first half, looking to evade capture from anxious eyes. So if the first house was the setting for a thriller, what was perceived from our end as holding elusive danger, here it's us causing the thriller to happen while from our pov it is recast as this exhilarating game of hide-and-seek. It makes sense to watch this as a dance or performance art; where one partner swings out of view just seconds before the other enters it, with both locked together in a ballet of appearances.

The man obsessively imagines himself as part of a relationship, and the film assumes a whimsical, light-hearted tone. This strangely underscores the fundamental creepiness of what is really going on.

There are two problems in all this. One is that it never makes any sense why our man behaves the way he does. Usually what Hitchcock did was that he would supply the doubt of an unreliable eye or unstable mind; here the guy seems perfectly normal and then acts completely unhinged.

The other is the ending, where the filmmaker stretches to explain for us the missing links of the story. We knew that the two houses were somehow linked, but it turns out that they were quite literally so. So instead of using mirrored space - and persons, there's two of everyone here and one woman seems to be the other's twin sister - as the means of examining abstract reflections, we're give pieces of a puzzle to put together. In doing so, whole swathes of the story collapse and what held elusive power by remaining just out of sight is made to be safely ordinary or, worst, downright stupid.

As a Horror fan, I was fairly disappointed that (yet again) another film was tagged/labeled as Horror when it simply isn't. I don't know how long it will take before it finally sinks in - a Thriller is not Horror. The difference might be less obvious and more subtle and nuance depended than the difference between Comedy and Drama, but it's there!

However, as a films fan and a literature fan, I was very pleasantly surprised. The Uninvited Guest has one of the best script/ideas I've ever seen. The way the protagonist Felix is haunted by the intruder in his house (or maybe just his paranoid thoughts of one?) and then ends up as such in a similar situation himself is artistic and almost genius.

The acting of the main characters is excellent, Andoni Gracia and Monica Lopez have really given lives to the script. The other characters I believe weren't important enough to director/writer Morales vision, they could have been given a little more depth. No harm done though, and the sensations of confusion, discomfort and bizarre anxiety in the audience weren't negatively affected.

The ending had a very nice (if somewhat predictable) twist, and could be understood in more than one way. All in all, while not exactly frightening or horrific, The Uninvited Guest is a clever, original and innovative film. Recommended!

Is it possible to live in somebody's house hiding all the time and avoid that the inhabitants there detect your presence? Well, that's the question this original story deals with. "El habitante incierto" keeps the audience on the alert, 'cause you don't really know what's going on. That plot remind me of Ki-Duk Kim's "Bin Jip" (but that's the only point in common between these two movies).

The movie has a good script, though some dialogs are rather affected and there are a couple of characters that are not well defined. Anyway, the film as a whole really thrilling and brilliant, and the actors are quite reliable (specially Mónica López who plays two different roles).

In short: a nice choice.

*My rate: 7/10