Parents' Guide to Uninvited

This mediocre revenge thriller is imbalanced, improperly paced, and boring. Unfortunately, there's just too much bloated drama in Uninvited, and the melodramatic aesthetic of the first 80% of the film is unexciting. The initial setup for this revenge thriller is intriguing, if only for the fact that the lead is an older Filipino woman seeking revenge for her murdered daughter. But somewhere at this film's halfway mark, most viewers will start to wonder when the actual revenge part will start. On top of this, at some point, Lilia even states emphatically, "You know, I've been working on this for a while." Since when? We never see her planning, scheming, plotting. And when the "revenge" finally does start to happen, it feels almost accidental in nature.

The most egregious problem, though, is this movie's structure. Oddly, this revenge thriller is 80–90% drama and reasons for revenge, with 10–20% actual revenge. Perhaps in another film, this ratio could work, but it's hard to imagine John Wick, for example, spending 80% of the time watching Wick cry over and mourn his deceased dog, with 20% comeuppance at the end. Other problems exist too: the all-over-the-place performances, the odd brutality of the film's tone juxtaposed with its melodrama, and the unconvincing ways Lilia's victims meet their demise. In the end, there are simply too many better and more successful examples in this genre to watch instead of this.