The Uninvited (PG-13, 2009)

Another in a long line of Asian horror films remade for American audiences, THE UNINVITED has all the hallmarks and drawbacks of peers like The Grudge and Pulse. There are familiar scary visions, a reliance on atmosphere over plot, and a contempt for the audience -- manifested by emphasizing violence and chills over plot and character, as if enough blood and gore will distract us from the shabby plot moments and the characters' shallowness.

Worst of all, The Uninvited builds to a climactic twist that feels more annoying than exciting and more shallow than suspenseful. The filmmakers want you to examine all the ways that the twist rewrites what you've seen before, but that aim would be a lot easier to accomplish if they'd actually given you a reason to care about all of that stuff. The Uninvited whould perhaps have been more honestly titled The Uninspired.