Ever since the Japanese horror film Ringu translated into the box office smash The Ring in 2002, Hollywood  has attempted to remake any Asian text it can get its grubby little hands on. The Uninvited is their latest attempt, originating as the acclaimed South Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters in 2003. Thankfully though, not everything good about the source material was lost in translation.  The film might be as formulaic as the pages of a cook book, but strong performances and slick direction manages to craft The Uninvited into a brooding and suspenseful horror regardless.

Australia’s Emily Browning stars as Anna, a tormented teenage girl who struggles to deal with the tragic loss of her mother.  Upon returning home from the Psych ward for attempted suicide, Emily is all but thrilled to meet her dad’s new partner Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). She confides with her older sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel), who starts to question the genuineness of their new step-mum.  Since Rachel was the carer to Anna’s late mother, the two become convinced that Rachel was behind her “accidental” death.

Browning was notably seen last in 2004′s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is coincidently a five word plot synopsis for The Uninvited.  As Anna and Alex begin to look into Rachel’s history, her initial Stepford disposition is cracked open and things take a turn for the worst. It’s all a little overdone; the film leads you so sternly in one direction, it’s hard not to anticipate the (over the top) twist ending well before it arrives. Whilst it’s refreshing to see Elizabeth Banks show some range from her usual comic outings, the screenplay requires her to overact her shift from nice to nasty. She pulls it off well, but Hollywood is never this black and white; since we are given no possible alternative to believing that Rachel is up to no good, it becomes obvious there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

Yet knowing the secret isn’t as damning as you’d expect; the film’s build-up is well constructed, making it a suspenseful ride throughout.  In their first feature, the directorial duo of the Guard brothers do well to build up tension between Anna and Rachel, cleverly using eerie motifs such as a dinner bell to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. It’s a shame that they also intermittently resort to typical jump scares, but unlike this year’s first “Un-” film The Unborn, the film is driven by its tension rather than a string of cheap scares. The Uninvited‘s M15+ rating is also refreshing, as it manages to avoid being a slash-happy gore-fest like the recent remakes of My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13^th.The fact that the film remains brooding and engaging without blood being splattered in every second frame further commends the Guard brother’s direction.

Yet the film’s secret weapon is the rising young star Emily Browning, who gives a commanding performance as Anna.  It’s all in that beautiful, yet deeply troubled, face of hers. As she stares into the camera like a lost puppy, it makes it damn near impossible not to become deeply sympathetic with her character.  We side with her like we are her guardian, making her problems our own, which ironically makes The Uninvited more welcome than most Hollywood horror’s of the last decade.

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