The Uninvited (2009)

The Uninvited will most certainly divide the audience that the film is aimed towards. At once it is a rather clichéd contemporary horror film, until it references its background as a 2003 South Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters to create a rather inimitable and fresh horror film, one bound with thematic purpose and stylistic integrity. Directed by the Guard Brothers, the film follows Anna who has been bound to a mental hospital since the death of her mother ten months earlier, who is now ready to return back home. Her psychiatrist tells her to "finish what she started" which ironically forms the enigma which underlines the entire narrative. Anna's father takes her home, where she is reunited with her sister, Alex who also introduces Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), her mother's former nurse who is now dating Anna's father.

The Uninvited is not what it seems at the surface both literally and metaphorically speaking. The film is bound with enigmas which never quite add up even if you put together the fragments of the film that the Guard Brothers represent on screen. The film is shot in a way that allows us to piece the images together and form our own interpretation on a fairly basic and linear plotline. The shots are usually very fast-pace and even the location is never completely static, swapping between reality and dream, house and lake, rural and urban etc. While the film may appear to be a conventional horror film aimed at a mindless teenage audience, the film contains quite a depth beneath the screen that actually takes a lot to piece together to fully understand the sensation the film is trying to convey.

Anna is convinced that Rachel is evil and induces her sister in the process. The two of them together scheme against her to try to prove to their father that she is evil. This is where I will end with the plot synopsis. The film, noticeably, has some interesting characters, even if they are supporting actors driven into the mind-set of the film. Having said that, the film integrates so many different personalities and emotions from each of the characters that it seems as if there really isn’t a lead role, even if we believe that Anna is so. This is where we begin to question who the “uninvited” are? Perhaps some of the characters do have too many lines to speak that they almost become intrusive on the sisters lives? Or is Rachel an “uninvited” guest into the families home?

The Uninvited will most certainly please horror fans, but perhaps not so much those outsiders to the genre. The film uses horror conventions but twists and manipulates them, something that the horror audience will most certainly appreciate. The film has a unique twist on familiar situations and events that they feel they are somehow attuned to. Overall The Uninvited is a well done, stylistically effective horror film that will most certainly satisfy many. You are therefore invited!

Taken (2009)

Taken follows Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) a divorced and retired CIA operative whose 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) wants to go to Paris but actually intends to follow band U2 around Europe. Arriving in Paris, Kim and her friend Amanda are victim to Albanian sex traffickers who stalk the friends, wanting nothing but to violate their innocence. Taken undoubtedly impacts on the viewer, the narrative has a good structure, and the audience are often left on the edge of their seat, victim to the gritty realism that strikes the teens on screen. The visual style to the film is gripping, often complementing the tone of the sex traffickers as something real and not to be messed with. The film, however, is often very linear, Neeson constantly strives to guess the Albanian's moves leaving the audience with no choice but to wait for the outcome of the film as opposed to an active engagement with the narrative itself.

From the actual kidnapping staged with Kim actually on the phone with dad to Bryan arriving in Paris and immediately causing a pileup outside the airport the film does not take a breath to allow a moment of reflect or psychological explanations for the antagonists motives, as the work in the film is all done for us. One is left wondering if the film was not located in France with rather unique cinematography, would Taken come across as a futuristic James Bond with Neeson as the masculine counterpart. Noticeably the film does contain a contradiction. The cinematography suggests a sense of gritty realism something that creates the tension in the film; whereas the action on screen, however, steps away from this realism, especially in the Yacht scene when Neeson fights off near enough every man on board, contradicting the somewhat practical atmosphere the film was trying to create. Overall, Taken is a satisfying contemporary thriller, adding a new angle to a well established genre, even if it has its flaws throughout.

The Unborn (2009)

The Unborn, written and directed by David S. Goyer follows the life of Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) who is beset by merciless dreams, and a grotesque child who she suspects is her dead twin who died in her mothers womb and now wants to be born. What is unique and so engaging about The Unborn is it steps away from horrors conventional notions of murder and afterlife and focuses on life before it even exits. In this way, the film tries to separate itself from the traditional horror narrative, but with very little success. There are repetitive shots of windows and mirrors in the film which doesn’t show the horror to be in the mirror reflection that we so often expect, but in the bathroom cabinet itself which suggests the films rejection of traditional horror conventions when it really didn’t have the authority or ingenuity to do so. Beldon discovers at the end of the film that she, herself, is also having twins, which is fairly predictable and rather ironic considering how different the film always strived to be.