Saturday, February 7, 2009

Can I Please be Uninvited?


So I checked out The Uninvited and took one for the team. You know, Mike and I went to go try to see the Unborn when it came out and were accosted by teeny boppers while we were going to wait in line. Luckily, we decided to give it up and find something else to do. That same crowd showed up to The Uninvited and made it a very Unfun movie.


This is a movie about a girl who has had a horrible accident take her mother who was dying of a terminal illness, which results in Anna trying to kill herself and being put in a mental institution. The story picks up 10 months later when Anna is allowed to leave only to find out that her mother's nurse who was played by Elizabeth Banks (hottie) has moved in and is Anna's father's girlfriend. Anna plots with her sister Alex to find out what really happened the night of her mother's death which leads to some twists and turns, and dramatic music.


I'll have to admit that there were some good scare moments, but they could have taken a page out of the Japanese Horror genre and put more subtle scares in. Case in point - there was a moment where Anna is in the attic going through her mother's old stuff and I fully expected to see something like a dead hand move in the background. No such luck. The scary moments were prefaced by intense music and slow moving motions to doors so not very surprising at all. There was a moment that I cringed. It involved a graphic, gruesome discovery, with a visual and audio that I will not soon forget while two people start making out. That's all I am going to say because it really was the highpoint of the movie and I wouldn't want you to expect it.


Now I generally judge a movie on how realistic the reactions of the characters are to information revealed and what they do with that information. Another example - Anna finds out that Elizabeth Banks character has changed her name and is not who she says she is. For some inexplicable reason Anna and Alex decide not to approach their father with the information, instead they decide to attend a dinner party and then go to the police the next day. Wouldn't you think you should tell someone close to you about potentially important info like that? Sorry, I shouldn't be knit-picky about stuff like that but I do.


All of this is set up to give us a "giant twist" that seems to give all of the teeny boppers a headache (at least what I could tell from posts they had put on Fandango about the movie). The twist wasn't that hard to follow, but it is a twist that we have seen way to often as of late. I am not going to give it away, but I can give you a list of movies that end the same way if you would like it. Overall, the journey was alright, but the girls talking and screaming and then laughing at themselves screaming was enough to annoy me. I give this a redbox, and it would probably be better without the teenage audience and their commentary.

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