The Uninvited

An effective blend of thriller and horror.

As in the original, the film slyly manipulates the audience's perspective, and a brilliantly filmed climactic 'reveal' marks this British duo as a pair to watch.

It's a slick, bloodless affair that's neither as suggestive as the classic general-audiences ghost stories of the past, nor as intense as a hard-R would allow it to be.

The Uninvited is a mess of styles and stolen ideas, including a plot twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan roll his eyes and dialogue straight from a CW scene generator.

In truth it's just a gimmicky thriller that doesn't play fair with the audience.

Cheap thrills and a gimmicky twist at the climax keep The Uninvited in the realm of the subpar horror movie.

The only genuinely startling moments come via the deafening sound effects that accompany a large roast hitting the floor and Anna scraping metal hangers along a clothing rack.

It's not original, it's not especially clever and the twist won't make you want to watch it again, but hey - at least it wasn't The Unborn.

The Uninvited may strike even viewers who don't know the original as disarmingly familiar.

This is one of those "gotcha!" movies where nothing you see can be believed.

Take a 'concept', strip it bare of all layers of meaning, remake it with added genre cliches and scantily clad American teens in order to a 'wider audience'. Voila.

As far as PG-13 Americanizations of Asian shockers go, it's about 70 percent passable