Watched 02 Jan 2014
During the current Barnes & Noble Criterion sale, it seems that The Uninvited has been favorite to pick up as I have been seeing this one on Instagram a lot. We picked it up as well and watched it this weekend for the first time.
The cover art made the film to look scarier than the film really was, but it is a great film none the less. To me, it captured the essences of Noir with its use of darkness and shadows for helping tell the story about a brother and sister, who stumble upon an empty house and contact the owner to by it. The house has history and is haunted, which we find out over the length of the film with bits and pieces, finally coming together at the end.
While the film looses focus at times with too many characters and overly changing stories, I felt that the characters were defined and well executed, especially by Ray Milland, who I knew from Dial M For Murder.
Each time I find a film that entrances me, like this one, it makes me truly appreciate old cinema and what they had to go through to create the eeriness without the special effects that we come to take for granted now. Film makers were truly gifted back then and this is an excellent example of it.
