Uninvited, The

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Emily Browning's face helps The Uninvited work so well...She makes you fear for her, and that's half the battle. Yet she's so fresh she's ready for a Jane Austen role.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Uninvited is a flawed production, but gratifying in the way it delivers. The interesting and unique elements of the movie effectively compensate for the formulaic way in which the plot develops.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

Won't make anyone forget "The Shining," but it's a nice throwback to the days when scary movies featured pretty good actors, a plot that holds together and a couple of creepy-looking ghost kids.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

A remake of the 2003 Korean horror film "A Tale of Two Sisters," The Uninvited is a Hand That Rocks the Cradle–type thriller that's been dressed up as a horror movie.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

With visual nods to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and a fairly faithful adherence to the tenor and tone of the Korean scare genre, The Uninvited doesn't startle and shock so much as it lulls you into a series of unsettling, hallucinogenic set pieces.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Don't be too quick to turn down The Uninvited. A stylish horror thriller in the vein of "The Ring," it's well-acted, frightening and handsomely produced

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The actors are strong, however, and Banks in particular shows some skill and wiles in keeping her rascally stepmother stereotype lively.

Washington Post Mike Mayo

Experienced horror fans will probably stay one step ahead of the game, but it's still a nice ride.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The result is a middling Frankenstein-like hybrid of spectral mayhem and murder mystery, constructed entirely out of borrowed parts.

The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber

The film is still cheesy rather than deliciously scary. It never really generates sustained suspense.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The first Hollywood horror flick I've seen that seems like it was made specifically for 12-year-olds.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The main problem with The Uninvited lies in its refusal to decide just what movie it wants to be a commercial for. It certainly doesn’t have much in common with "A Tale of Two Sisters," the creepy Korean horror film of which it is supposedly a remake.

New York Post Kyle Smith

The horror flick The Uninvited is not unclever - but it is unoriginal.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Once spoiled by the gossamer disquietude of Kim Jee-woon's original Tale, it's difficult to view this Americanized version in anything but the blandest light.

Empire Kim Newman

Poor remake of the Korean thriller.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

As is generally the case with Hollywood movies that use Asian horror films as their inspiration, the Guard brothers seem to have glanced at the original, borrowed a few images and then made the movie according to some preconceived template of what makes audiences jump -- instead of burrowing into the stuff that haunts our dreams.

Variety Dennis Harvey

Weak even by the standard of uninspired recent Asian-horror remakes, The Uninvited is more likely to induce snickers and yawns than shudders and yelps.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Yeah, this is pretty much your classic been-there, done-that scenario: evil stepmother, clueless father, imperiled teen.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The plot borrows as freely from Hitchcock and Henry James as from the Bard of Avon, and doesn't make scrupulous sense, though I'd have to see the film again, which I won't do, to make sure it doesn't cheat.

Premiere Richard Chester

The climax is the only thing for which the rest of this flick exists.

Los Angeles Times Glenn Whipp

Without dwelling on the limited abilities of novice British filmmakers Tom and Charles Guard (a.k.a. the Guard Brothers) -- who seem to have divvied up duties here by having one sibling focus exclusively on close-up shots of doorknobs and the other oversee everything else -- the movie's fatal flaw is the undeveloped relationship between the two sisters.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A brutally inane movie.

TV Guide Jeremy Wheeler

It's best to line The Uninvited right up on the soon-to-be-forgotten shelves next to the now third-generation Asian remakes and wait for the next effective foreign genre fare for Hollywood to butcher and rehash.

Entertainment Weekly Adam Markovitz

Horror standbys like mangled corpses and stone-faced children pop up regularly, but sibling directors Charles and Thomas Guard haven't quite nailed the genre's rhythms.