This is not really a horror film; form-wise it has more in common with a mystery or drama. The intent is not to scare or gross out the viewer, but to examine the central themes and characters.
On that level it's fairly successful. There is a lot going on in the movie, and as another reviewer has mentioned, the focus tends to wander, so it's often hard to determine exactly what the movie is trying to say. Sometimes that works to The Uninvited's advantage; I like movies to have a little ambiguity in them where I can apply my own imagination, and there are several deliberately ambiguous moments here.
At other times, it's more of a distraction, as we wait in vain for the story to return to and possibly resolve an earlier theme. Instead, the film moves on to examine other ideas, and while they are usually interesting ideas, the inevitable result is that by the film's conclusion it seems like there's a lot left unresolved. I don't mean "loose threads" in the usual sense of plot elements that are unexplained (although there are a few of those), but more like bigger themes that seemed like what the movie was about at the beginning of the film and didn't at the end of the film.
The acting is decent, overall, but the two leads both play the sort of shell-shocked, alienated characters that are hard to relate to even if we're sympathetic to begin with, and most of the other characters are not terribly fleshed out. The direction is good although the pace is slow (unnecessarily slow at times).
(Parenthetically, one shot used in The Uninvited seems so obviously ripped off from Ringu that I figure it's got to be an homage, but the movie seems like it takes itself too seriously to throw in a Ringu homage.)
Overall, a worthy but flawed effort that is much more complex and rewarding than most Asian horror movies of recent years.
On that level it's fairly successful. There is a lot going on in the movie, and as another reviewer has mentioned, the focus tends to wander, so it's often hard to determine exactly what the movie is trying to say. Sometimes that works to The Uninvited's advantage; I like movies to have a little ambiguity in them where I can apply my own imagination, and there are several deliberately ambiguous moments here.
At other times, it's more of a distraction, as we wait in vain for the story to return to and possibly resolve an earlier theme. Instead, the film moves on to examine other ideas, and while they are usually interesting ideas, the inevitable result is that by the film's conclusion it seems like there's a lot left unresolved. I don't mean "loose threads" in the usual sense of plot elements that are unexplained (although there are a few of those), but more like bigger themes that seemed like what the movie was about at the beginning of the film and didn't at the end of the film.
The acting is decent, overall, but the two leads both play the sort of shell-shocked, alienated characters that are hard to relate to even if we're sympathetic to begin with, and most of the other characters are not terribly fleshed out. The direction is good although the pace is slow (unnecessarily slow at times).
(Parenthetically, one shot used in The Uninvited seems so obviously ripped off from Ringu that I figure it's got to be an homage, but the movie seems like it takes itself too seriously to throw in a Ringu homage.)
Overall, a worthy but flawed effort that is much more complex and rewarding than most Asian horror movies of recent years.