The Uninvited Review

Brace yourselves - here comes another one of those 'orrible 'uns! With some notable exceptions (Unforgiven, The Untouchables, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being), movies sporting the prefix 'un' in their titles are frequently hostages to fortune. On the one hand, they're more interesting-sounding than, say 'The Born', 'The Faithful' or 'The Canny' (and somewhere in a parallel universe there exists a John Wayne western called 'The Defeated'). On the other hand, the very application of those negative prefixes can ironically hasten the film's undoing. Which is unfortunate. And obviously undesirable.

Such is the fate of The Uninvited, another all-too inevitable K-horror remake. Here, young Anna (Australian actress Emily Browning) returns home after a year's spell in a psychiatric clinic, following the devastating death of her invalid mother in a housefire. Along with her elder, spunkier sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) she's soon warring with her frosty-knickered stepmother, and mom's former live-in nurse, Rachael (a miscast Elizabeth Banks, in Hand That Rocks The Cradle mode).

In a scenario that would have Sigmund Freud jumping up and down and furiously pulling his beard, Anna becomes convinced that Rachael did away with her ailing charge and is plotting to kill the daughters next, the better to have dad (David Strathairn) all to her self. Meanwhile, a creeping dread pervades their New England coastal home - ghostly children, the old hands-round-the-edge-of-the-bedcovers routine and charred manifestations of mum, all seeming to point to Rachael's culpability. Is Anna actually onto something? Or did somebody sign the wrong release form?