ScreenWize

In 2003 director Ji-woon Kim took the South Korean box-office by storm with his creepy supernatural thriller The Tale of Two Sisters – loosely based on a traditional Korean folktale about ghosts, stepmothers and sisters coping with their mother’s death. The Univited is a remake of the film by English brothers Thomas and Charles Guard, and stars Australian actress Emily Browning in the lead role. It’s a standard supernatural thriller – but carefully and thoughtfully crafted with little sign of gore or cheap horror tricks. However, the film is probably pitched too elegantly to appeal to hard-core horror fans yet lacks enough substance to draw huge crowds at its run on the big screen.

Browning – who you may remember as Violet from A Series of Unfortunate Events – plays Anna Rydell, returning home after a stint in a mental hospital where’s she’s been recovering from her mother’s accidental death. She is plagued by nightmares and unable to recall the truth of what happened, even though she was somehow involved. She has to adjust to her father’s new girlfriend Rachael (Elizabeth Banks) who has redecorated and taken the place of her mother. Also at home in their creepy mansion by the sea, is Anna’s reclusive father Steven (David Strathairn) and gregarious sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) who is angrier about what has happened to the family. As Anna wanders through the house, memories and visions flood back and we come to understand that things are not what they seem. Oblivious to all danger – including some creepy school children - Anna pushes on in her quest to find the truth.

Browning is perfectly cast as the innocent victim, and her doll-like performance might see her offered many another horror role. She is an unsettled heroine who wafts through unsettled terrain, and the film’s strength comes from the lack of clarity about what is real, what is imagined and what is invented in its conveniently isolated setting. We have plenty of time – given the pace of the film – to hypothesise about what is going on, and whilst you may easily guess some of the answers, there’s enough of a surprise in the final act to keep you interested – even if you’re no longer being scared. Banks makes for an excellent stepmother: sufficiently sexy to attract dad and repulse his daughters, and sufficiently strung-out to have us all worried about her real motives.

Overall, it may not be as stylish or successful as the original but it’s a well-made and easily watched entry at the soft end of the genre.

Rating:

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon