The Uninvited (2003)

Jeong-won (Shin-yang Park) is an interior designer. He sees the ghosts of two young girls. He bumps into a girl (Gianna Jun) who has fainting spells, but also has this vision thing. His interest in her vision causes a rift with his girlfriend (Seon Yu).This is a Korean film available with English and Spanish subtitles. It goes from the vision into his childhood and a trail. The film s 1% horror and 99% faux drama. The Asians have yet to figure out "90 minutes in the can" type of films and attempts to make each one a long drawn out masterpiece. I was mostly bored.Guide: No f-bombs, or sex. Very brief nudity.

I got the DVD for the Uninvited not knowing what to expect, Asian Horror movies are usually very different one from another. There are movies that go heavy on the blood and others than go heavy on the Drama; The Uninvited falls in the latter, just like other movies like Dark Water or Two Sisters. The movie is about a man named Jung-won who is an Interior designer. One day he falls asleep in the subway and he must hurry out before the doors close, but outside he notices that the two kids are still on the train, and he does nothing. The next day he hears on the radio that the 2 children were dead and suddenly he starts seen the kids sitting at his dinner table. He ignores what is happening to him, probably thinking is the shock of watching the children dead in the train until the day he meets a woman named Yun who suffers from narcolepsy, so he takes her to his home when she loses conscious in his car, and just when she is leaving she tell him to put his kids in bed, so now Jung-won is not the only one seeing the dead kids. From there Yun helps Jung-won find the gruesome secrets buried in his past, but he is not the only one with a dark past. The movie has some very shocking scenes that play very well. Both lead actors, Shin-yang Park and Ji-hyun Jun (most known for her part in the romantic comedy (My Sassy Girl") did a fantastic job playing these troubled characters. The cinematography is superb, there were some scenes were I was very impressed. The US DVD from Panik House is great, from the cover to the extras. There are 2 Audio Commentaries, one in English, which is very informative about the Korean culture and Cinema and another one in Spanish. It has a Making Off, Interviews with the lead Actors, a story boards/scenes comparisons, and other need stuff like a condensed version of the movie. The DVD also comes with a sticker of the cover. I really recommend this movie to everyone, is not a simple horror movie but a complex drama with some very shocking moments.

Jeong-won is an architect who one day - while going home on the subway - takes notice of two small girls who sits next to him. When he reaches the end-station he gets of, but the two girls remain seated. Later he learns that the girls were dead and from then on a series of events start to take place. Basically Jeong-won has his life shattered by disturbing events that may be happening around him or in his head, or both. Watch it and judge for yourself. But the theme of this movie isn't whether the events are real or not. The movie tells a story where religion, psychology and supernatural elements mix together in an elegant cocktail of mystery, fear and love. The story is great and very well told. You're told enough to make it all coherent, but there is also room for interpretation which makes the movie a personnel experience. The movie doesn't deal with good and evil in absolute terms, but deals with the fears and anxieties that we all harbor to some extent. And it deals with the dilemma of helping people to reconcile with a part of themselves that should have been left forgotten, or should it?The true essence of the story isn't revealed until relatively late, compared to other movies who set the tone right from the beginning. To begin with I thought it was a simple ghost-story, but I was wrong. So if you don't like such twists, then consider yourself warned.Quietness is probably the key word to the acting and the style of the movie. The actors succeed in making the characters very believable. Several of the scenes are beautifully made with the right camera angles, the right lighting, colors and so on. The ambiance is dripping with a mysterious silence and calm.There are no cheap scares of the traditional Hollywood kind (which is a combination of fast editing combined with the explosion of a symphony orchestra). Instead the scary parts - or more properly for this movie - the chilling parts are shown in a forthright manner and what they depict is usually enough to get the heart rate up. When a movie is capable of giving you the chills without having to resort to loud noises or sudden events, then it is truly scary, and some of the scenes will stay with you for some time. A quality which separates true horror from the superficial scares which you can just shrug of after the movie. However, this isn't a full blood horror movie. The horror scenes are just to few and the general horror-level isn't high enough. See this movie if you like a great story, riddled with mystery, fear and psychological deepness. I liked it a lot and I probably have to see it again in order to enjoy its elegant complexity.

I'd been disappointed in Korean cinema as of late. After the wonderful "Shiri," I found myself annoyed with "Tell Me Something," confused by "A Tale of Two Sisters," and outright bored with "Ring Virus." So I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of this film, whose Korean title translates literally to "4 Doll Table."First off, it's not a straight horror film. It incorporates elements of the genre, but is principally dramatic. And it's a doozy.It's impossible to properly articulate the plot. The plot is easy enough to follow, but it's intricate and deep, and just giving out details and summaries recklessly ignores all of the context these details have.What I will say is that this is the most masterfully written and directed Korean film I have ever seen, and the acting for it is absolutely stellar. Admittedly it's very long and glacially paced, but it's rewarding. Scenes have purpose and even though this isn't totally a horror film, it does feature scenes that are downright disturbing and very chilling.This is a strong, original, intelligent film that art-house fans would do well to pick up off of eBay. I impulse bought it and it wound up paying off in a big way.Absolutely outstanding. Must see.