13 May 2009

The Uninvited

A respectable Hollywood adaptation of K-horror A Tale of Two Sisters. Retitled The Uninvited, it is one of the best remakes of an Asian film to arrive in a long time.

Director: Thomas Guard, Charles Guard
Cast: Emily Browning, Elizabeth Banks, Arielle Kebbel, David Strathairn, Kevin McNulty, Jesse Moss, Dean Paul Gibson, Maya Massar, Don S. Davis

Hollywood rarely gets its adaptation of Asian horror right (see The Eye, Shutter, Pulse, One Missed Call, Dark Waters, Ring 2, Mirrors) but its remake of Korea’s A Tale of Two Sisters almost hits the mark.

As one might expect, the surreal tone of the original film by Kim Ji Woon has been sucked out so as not to leave supposedly-unimaginative American audiences scratching their heads. But much of the plot’s mystery has been left intact and, sometimes, impressively reinvented, so the results will probably please horror junkies as well as fans of the original film.

Emily Browning plays a young girl who is warded in a hospital for psychiatric treatment after seeing her mother killed in a fire. When her doctor concludes that she is well again, she leaves the hospital and returns home only to find that her father is having a relationship with the nanny.

Reunited with her elder sister (Arielle Kebbel), the pair suspects the nanny of murdering their mother to be with their father. They hatch a plot for revenge…

A watchable adaptation that has already made an impressive $58million worldwide.