Still on my quest to be frightened this October, I tried again with The Uninvited. Once again, a movie failed me.
That isn’t to say, though, that I didn’t enjoy this movie. I did. The storyline was original (well, not that original since it was based on a South Korean film) and the acting wasn’t horrible. I much preferred the sister to the man protagonist of the film, but you can’t have everything.
I don’t think David Strathairn has ever been in a film I didn’t enjoy. And while he finally got some recognition when he was nominated for an Academy Award for Good Night and Good Luck (a film I haven’t seen and need to put on my list of must-sees), I still consider him one of Hollywood’s most underrated actors.
Usually good about picking up on such things, I didn’t see the twist ending coming at all. I liked it, though. And I liked the fact that this film found a way to be compelling without being gory. And I wonder if my subconscious equates gory with scary now because this film had no real gore, nor did it scare me. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to scare me but it sure was marketed as a “horror” movie. I’ll settle for calling it an effective thriller.
I could have picked a worse way to spend a ninety minutes today.