The Uninvited (1996)

Purely Joyful Movie!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I saw this movie on TV last Halloween. I'm not saying it was a bad movie but then again I'm not saying it was good either. It was just okay.I was hoping to see something really creepy and scary and that's NOT what I got. The story was pretty good, it had one or two spooky moments but it was not a scary movie. And I'm a person that scares very easily. It also had a sort of a cheeseball ending too. The effects were good but it was over done and it just wasn't that cool. But it was interesting.I haven't seen very many scary movies in my lifetime. Not as many as I would like to anyway. But this definitely wasn't a movie I would buy.

Beau Bridges,(Charles Johnson), tried his best to believe his wife, Pattie Johnson,(Sharon Lawrence), that their brand new house was having strange things happen in the bathroom and closets. Charles Johnson, was a truck driver and had very little time to worry about his wife's problems, having lost a child during her pregnancy. There is a tree in the film, that looks like a pretzel all bend out of shape, and I really think the director's brain was twisted just like it. The actors did their very best to carry this film on their backs, namely: Sharon Lawrence and Beau Bridges; they both must have had plenty of laughs making this film, because in some ways, it was comical and stupid. The name I viewed this film under, was called: "The Victim of the Haunt"! WOW

I am particularly attracted to haunted house and ghost movies, even bad ones, but this movie which is supposed to be documenting the true story of Doretta Johnson's experiences in Madison,Indiana has every contrived haunted house plot point from every haunted house movie ever made, and a few new ones. There's the bodies buried on the property (it's not built on a cemetary as some commenters have thought), there's too many special effects, a crazy psychic, a disbelieving husband and a child in danger. Toss on top a mother whose stories are so crazy they have to be delusions and doctors more concerned in her than the truth and you have a movie that isn't really worth watching. One the plus side, Sharon Lawrence really has some good moments and Alex D. Linz shines as a true child actor. The hauntings aren't very scary, though, but the movie does push maybe too hard for the emotional scenes. A lot of it, however, I find just too ridiculous. The plot is just not very realistic or believable. This is what happens when you push a script too fast into production. If you want the real story, check out the re-enactment on "Haunted Lives" or the investigations on "Sightings."

I saw this film for the first time recently and was amazed at the striking similarities between this movie and the original Poltergeist, made in 1982. "The Uninvited takes place in an affluent, Cuesta-Verde-like neighborhood. The family's house has a twisted old tree much like the one that the Freelings' have in Poltergeist. The story here is a tad different, with Sharon Lawrence's character having a baby that is stillborn. It is after this that she begins to witness strange phenomena in her house. At this point, the parallels begin: When the poltergeist-like phenomena start to happen, she is amused by it and thinks of it as a "playful supernatural force" that we don't yet understand. This also happens in Poltergeist: Remember Diane and Carol-Anne playing with their poltergeist in the kitchen. Later in "The Uninvited" the poltergeist, of course, turns menacing, posing a particular threat to Sharon Lawrence's young son, played by Alex D. Linz, just as the poltergeist targets Carol-Anne in the original. Sharon Lawrence soon enlists the aid of an older psychic woman to help her make sense of it all. She informs us that the "heart" of the house is in the child's closet. In a scene that mirrors the original poltergeist, the closet lights up and opens to reveal all of the toys (including wind-up toys) moving around on their own. Then comes an earthquake-like shaking followed by a shot of Sharon Lawrence clinging to the psychic with tears running down her face saying "Go into the light! Your mother is waiting for you in the light!" We also learn that the house is built on a cemetery where, surprise surprise, they didn't move the bodies. If you have seen Poltergeist, you will recognize the similar scenarios and camera shots throughout "The Uninvited:" The mother running down a moving hallway to reach her children to have the door slammed in her face and the door locked by the poltergeist; The classic "stacking" scene- here done with eggs rather than chairs; The father searching around a mud pit in the pouring rain discovers the remains of the cemetery; The confrontation between the mother and the poltergeist that, when it becomes visible, looks like the twin of the one in the Spielberg movie. Bottom line: Rent the horror classic "Poltergeist" and forget this unofficial remake.