There’s a substantial twist in “The Uninvited,” a pretty fair and reasonably scary remake of South Korean director Kim Jee-Woon’s thriller “A Tale of Two Sisters.” The twist was there in the stylish original, which I watched after the English-language re-do. If one of my film critic colleagues hadn’t guessed the twist out loud, and correctly, I might very well have been taken in by it. But you know? I’ll never know.
The Guard Brothers directed “The Uninvited.” They are Thomas and Charles, and they are British, and while much of their work here stays in strict stylistic line with the 2003 original, they supply jolts efficiently. Any idiot can frighten an audience with a “boo!” moment—the heroine turning suddenly, only to be startled by some innocent character, for example. Almost any idiot can direct a sequence involving the slow approach to a creepy, concealing object, out of which something will spring, or ooze or fly. But the quality of the surprise after the suspense, that’s what separates the hacks from the talent. The Guard Brothers cut fast and rarely steer clear of cliche, but they have a knack. Continue reading
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