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"The Uninvited" seems to follow a familiar and frightful pattern: An outsider insinuates himself or herself into a family and slowly proves treacherous or poisonous.
Consider the nanny in "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," the neighbors in "Rosemary's Baby" or the murderous uncle in "Shadow of a Doubt."
Here, it's a nurse named Rachel (Elizabeth Banks) who goes from caring for a dying woman to romancing her patient's husband, Steven (David Strathairn). That doesn't sit well with Steven's younger daughter, Anna (Emily Browning), who is released from a psychiatric facility as the story opens.
Anna tried to cut her wrists after her ailing mother was killed in a fiery explosion. Her doctor thinks she's ready to return to her family's idyllic waterside house in Maine and suggests she "go home, kiss a boy, get into trouble, finish what you started."
Little does he know the trouble that awaits or what lies beneath, to borrow the title from yet another movie about a home where things were not what they seemed.
- Starring: Elizabeth Banks, David Strathairn, Emily Browning
- Rating: PG-13 for violent and disturbing images, thematic material, sexual content, language and teen drinking
- Web site: uninvitedmovie.com
Once Anna returns and reunites with her sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), she is convinced that Rachel is the devil in a blue dress. But, as is customary in such thrillers, no one will believe her when she tries to plead her case to her father or the local sheriff.
As with the automotive industry, moviemakers looked first to Japan and, then, Korea, for inspiration for a new brand of suspense. "The Uninvited" shares producer DNA with "The Ring," which ushered in J-horror and could give way to K-horror.
It relies on some tried-and-true tricks, including drugging someone who is then defenseless in the face of danger, and a raft of red herrings. With a cast more classy than shlocky, "The Uninvited" had me fooled, utterly, although its selective perspective makes that possible.
British brothers Tom and Charlie Guard make their feature directing debut and pull off a dandy movie magic trick; we're looking here, when the sinister sleight of hand is there. And death is, of course, everywhere.
