Daily Archives: January 29, 2009

The Uninvited

Film Reviews

A space-filling genre programmer through and through, The Uninvited is one of those movies that plugs along in such avowedly unfussy, obvious fashion as to lull its audience into a shrugging sense of giggly complacency; it spends a lot of time and effort convincing folks that it’s nothing more than an exercise in stylistic manipulation. Then — aha! — comes that One Big Twist, and everything is turned upside down, leaving the audience reeling in appreciation. Right… err, right? Well, not really. No matter how wildly they reframe the narrative, story twists applied lazily just come across as weird and/or yawn-inducing, and unfortunately that’s the case here. The Uninvited isn’t quite clever enough to earn any admiration for its switcheroo finale.

The film opens with Maine teenager Anna (Emily Browning, above left) describing a terrible nightmare to her therapist. In centers around her cancer-stricken mother, who died eight months ago in a fire — an event Anna witnessed, which then led her to try to kill herself. After the therapist gives her some sunny, idiotic advice (“Go home, kiss a boy, get into trouble, finish what you started!”), Anna bounces out of the psychiatric institution where she’s been held with nary a hint of any dark clouds swirling around her, save some scars on her wrists.

Her novelist father Steven (David Strathairn) picks her up, and Anna returns home to her older sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel, above right) and Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), the live-in nurse who’s moved in on the girls’ dad. Anna gets a visit from her mother’s ghost, and when the girls find out about their father’s recent marriage proposal to Rachel, they become convinced that the mysterious interloper did their mother in — a notion Rachel’s penchant for control and breathy, menacing whispers does little to dissuade. Some Nancy Drew-style investigation ensues, and things get spookier when Anna learns of an unsolved homicide case from 10 years earlier involving an in-home caregiver named Mildred Kemp.

Based on a 2003 Korean horror film from director Kim Jee-Woon, and adapted by Craig Rosenberg, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard, The Uninvited plays for most of its running time, as mentioned, as a very straightforward, on-the-nose, domestic thriller — a downgrade, killer-stepmom lever-puller much in the vein, narratively speaking, of The Glass House or The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Milking Anna’s instability for slight pokes to the small of the back, there are visions of her Kentucky-fried mom, as well as bleeding keyholes and the like. No stringy, wet-haired Asian girls, though.

As directed by British brothers Charles and Thomas Guard, the movie makes nice use of some effective camera angles when trading in this dream-state spookery that bedevils Anna. But when it comes time for The Uninvited to wow us, and pull the rug out from under an audience, it fails. In the plainest terms, this is evident in the several weak flashbacks that comprise the movie’s post-twist scenes; clever films show you what was there all along, but you failed to consider integral. The Uninvited just lays its revelation on the table, but does nothing to earn it, or make it stick. Indeed, leaving the theater you might be reflecting back on any number of scenes, and thinking how they don’t quite fully make sense in light of the twist.

Browning has pouty, young Angelina Jolie-type lips, and is kind of a cool choice around which to center the movie, in that she isn’t conventionally va-voomish, or made out to look as such. Banks, though, is required to act significantly different depending on what a given scene calls for from her character, and in the end the script still hinges to an awkward degree on adults being required to do dumb things, in order to make Anna and Alex the center of the story, or force certain circumstances upon them. It’s a slight, to-scale success, I guess, in the sense that The Uninvited is able
to somewhat lull inattentive younger audiences into thinking they’re
watching a different kind of movie than what’s actually unfolding. The
narrative execution of its conceit, though, is fairly uninviting. (Paramount/DreamWorks, PG-13, 87 minutes)

Vacancy 2: The First Cut

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Despite being directed by a guy with the first name Nimrod, 2007’s Vacancy, a thriller about the dangers of leaving the comfortable asphalt confines of the
interstate, managed to locate some primal,
gut-level reactions to darkness, jarring noise, faceless killers and
the like. Its straight-to-DVD sequel jumps back to the beginning of the bare-bones mythology laid out in that film, sketching out another stalking tale of very bad acts at a desolate hotel — this time in the form of some peeping Toms who catch a psychotic killer in the act, and then decide to enter into a black-market snuff film pact with him.

At the end of the first film, authorities shut down the remote Pinewood Motel after discovering over 200 videotaped murders on the premises. Vacancy 2: The First Cut charts how the grisly terror began, fleshing out a tale that’s three parts barbarism to one part unlikely opportunism. Suspecting only a night of hard beds and tacky decor, Caleb (Trevor
Wright), his sexy new fiancée Jessica (Agnes Bruckner) and his
sarcastic best friend Tanner (Arjay Smith, very much the token black
guy), the ultimate strange third wheel, check into a rundown rural inn. They have no idea that it’s not
just another lonely motel, but in fact a horrific trap where guests are
brutally tortured and murdered while the sadistic Smith (Scott G. Anderson, reprising his homicidal character from the original movie) and his greedy accomplices, Gordon and Reece (David Moscow and Brian Klugman), film the grisly slayings for profit. Caught in
a deadly game of cat and mouse, the three young friends now must fight
to survive. Can they outwit the deranged killers and escape the roadside trap by morning, or will their fate be forever sealed on video cassette?

Vacancy 2 works in a couple good, or at least good-ish, head feints, including an elongated set-up that introduces a just-wed couple who don’t get axed. Gordon and Reece, you see, are at first just into taping sex acts of randy travelers passing through; it’s Smith who whets their appetite for artery-severing mayhem, after they catch him in the fact of murdering a prostitute. While narratively improbable, I give the movie some credit for piecing things together in a way that interestingly fits with the original film. There’s also some decent performances here, considering the laid track of the script. Still, it remains undeniable that certain character combinations and actions make no sense, be it a honeymooning couple who lay over on a whim or the fact that Tanner is even around in the first place. Also, director Eric Bross (Restaurant, Ten Benny), while slipping in a few moments of downbeat menace, can’t fully resist the impulse to cram in a couple thunderously stupid scene cappers — one early sequence ends with a character menacingly stabbed a dart onto a nearby countertop, and intoning, in chilly fashion, “Let’s get to work.” I mean… really? Do killers, or even those who have yet to kill, say stuff like that?

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, Vacancy 2: The First Cut is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. Owing to its whopping slate of Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks — six different languages, plus a group commentary track — the DVD is fairly slow to navigate, unfortunately. And that grates. Subtitles in seven languages are also available, so if you speak only Thai but still really like stalking American horror pictures of contained space, then by all means this is right up your alley.

In addition to a collection of deleted scenes, two making-of featurettes are included, including a 13-minute general-interest/behind-the-scenes piece and a stand-alone seven-minute bit that examines the construction of the movie’s exterior inn location. The most engaging supplemental inclusion, however, might be a feature-length group audio commentary track consisting of actors Moscow and Bruckner, director Bross, executive producer Brian Paschal and producer Hal Lieberman. Sharing anecdotes of rampant poison oak outbreaks amongst cast and crew, this lively chat-fest covers a lot of ground. It’s perhaps a bit eyeroll-inducing when Bross starts talking about the “continually shifting balance of power between the antagonists,” the contrast in visual levels, and how certain framing (in the door jamb of a car, for instance) is designed to evoke a “V,” for the movie’s title. Still, there’s some fun, engaging stuff here; it’s not all just empty back-patting. For the movie’s trailer, click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

Laurent Cantet Talks Culture Clash and The Class

Interviews

French director Laurent Cantet is interested in the human condition, and the fragility of relationships. His latest movie — the winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee — aims to capture both the tumult of the adolescent educational experience and, more esoterically, the binding power yet forever extant vagaries and separations of language. Born of a collaboration with novelist/teacher Francois Bégaudeau and a group of teenage non-actors, The Class is a quietly observed drama about one year at a high school in a tough neighborhood (Bégaudeau plays the teacher) in which clashing cultures and attitudes — a microcosm of contemporary urban life — slowly reveal societal fissures. In advance of its wide release, I recently spoke with Cantet about the film’s English language title change, its evocation of multiple social divides, and how France trusts its teenagers more than America. For the full interview chat, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.