As is stated in this review’s title, The Uninvited is a social drama. One of its strengths is a pointed critique of Hollywood which will be most appreciated by people like the character Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) and her partner Sammy Wright (Walton Goggins) who invites them into her and Sammy’s villa located on the hills with gates around it.
Nadia Conners, writer and director of the film, must know what she is talking about when she is angry and decides to throw a party to entertain her guests. One can assume that Goggins’ real life wife has heard something as cruel as the message left for Rose in the beginning of Conners’ film. It is enough to say that the actress was informed that she cannot play the mother of a six year old kid anymore when she is only 40 something years of age herself. (Her son named Wilder is actually around that age, but one would not think so.) However, unlike Conners, no one has probably told Rose that she should become director after being a frustrated at actor who had to play a housewife and mother who is worried and busy with every single aspect of a party held for her husband’s top client, Gerald (Rufus Sewell) so that no inconveniences might arise.
Gerald returns to his warm welcome after shooting his film abroad in what seems to be a small gathering but he knows that it is not so. Sammy is talking about quitting his agency and starting his own one and hoping that under all the stars above, Gerald has his back, he is also looking to bed the Italian beauty Delia (Eva De Dominici) that his client has recently worked with. He is also not allowed to be that much upset about the fact since his ex wives’ ex Lucien (Pablo Pascal) is coming over who’s become a superstar after they split up and his cut could be big.
What Sammy could never anticipate, however, was the appearance of Helen (Lois Smith), an old woman over ninety who says that the Wrights’ house used to belong to her. She appears to be delusional, thinking that Sammy was her dead spouse. While Rose feels no objection at all in opening the door for someone like Helen, saying she wants to use the toilet, it is different for Sammy, the first of many doors Conners imagines to be blocked from women above a specific age.
Originally conceived as a stage production, ‘The Uninvited’ in its visual sense does not come across as one with DP Robert Leitzell’s skill as he employs a wide frame to create the impression of depth within color rather than depth within the picture. The lush blacks that assist in the night time dominance of the Spanish style house’s spacious interiors and the icicle lights also at times tend to make it look as though the characters exist in the middle of a void. However, there are indeed long and drawn out passages of speech combined with overly explanatory dialogue that unfortunately give away its play origins and these occur most notably when Helen is in the living room during a scene when the majority of guests are present and she has to simply watch Rose and Sammy’s turn to host a party.
Although Conners is always game to work in some exposition into the dialogues regardless of how forced it may seem and softened by the superb cast on offer, the film’s big idea is more complex. It is known that Rose has been harmed by the backward phenomenon of age and gender, but they are also the signs of something which Sammy is also subjected to. While these two are attending a party they would rather not be attending, it doesn’t seem to matter as much as who they go through with it for, for how come one needs to ask themselves why they do this in the first place.
The question, however, is still lingering when one is considering ‘The Uninvited’ for a wider audience than just the people working in the film and TV business. The ludicrous wastefulness of hiring a party photographer who snaps attendees’ auras, as well as the more than 200 dollar shots of whiskey, may be amusing to anyone who does not live in Los Angeles, but the movie seems to be overly culture specific, in such a way that it lacks diversity. Nevertheless, when there may be no other industry better suited to have considerations of such issues as ageism, surely others will look upon Rose with sympathy when she has the guts to think about her private life as being a consolation prize for her unrealized career ambitions. As a filmmaker of some confidence, it is satisfying to know that this is a decision that Conners does not have to make about herself at the present time.
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