Red Vines have better twists

The Uninvited manipulates its audience for no reason other than because it can. It sets up one story only to swap in another later, it bludgeons the soundtrack with ominous rattling and volume spikes, it shows us dreams that are blatant lies, and then, in the throes of desperation, it cheats one ending with another. Abuse like this hasn’t been dealt to punching bags.

No wonder studios stopped screening horror movies for critics: modern horrors are visual cons intended for teens with disposable allowances, not critics who can see through the wafer-thin plot devices and petty manipulation. Strangely enough, though, The Uninvited was screened for critics, which means someone at Dreamworks didn’t get a memo or the studio actually believes in its film. Or a third choice: no one at Dreamworks even cares anymore.

The Uninvited is a remake of the Korean movie A Tale of Two Sisters. Both movies were released after The Sixth Sense, which is a critical piece of trivia you’d look up on your own after viewing Uninvited. I’ve saved you a Google search, and maybe by the end of this review, a trip to the theater.

A lot can be diagnosed about a movie by its first line. I’m reminded of Terrence Malick’s Badlands, in which Martin Sheen begins his descent into madness with this: “I’ll give you a dollar to eat that collie.” In Uninvited, two teens are making out. He sits up: “I love you … and I have a condom.” Nothing says “welcome to our movie” better than empty proclamations and safe sex.

He is random dude at party. She is Anna (Emily Browning) and she’s dreaming of the night her mother died under mysterious circumstances. She wakes in therapy, her shrink telling her, “Sometimes we survive by remembering. Sometimes by forgetting.” He doesn't know it, but he just gave away the ending of the movie. It's Anna's last day in a psych ward; the camera cleverly shows us the scars on her wrists and then the loony neighbors in robes. Daddy, an author of books better than this screenplay, takes her home to a sprawling mansion on a lake. The boathouse, where mom died, has been rebuilt and dad (David Strathairn) has a new girlfriend, a too-young-for-him babe named Rachael (Elizabeth Banks). Rachael, realizing she's in a film, commits various acts of step-momery: shadowy eavesdropping, kitchen renovation, heavy-handed requests for grocery assistance and sexy workouts in stretch pants and nipple-accenting sports bras.

Anna, modest and wholesome, cavorts around the lake with her sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel), whose wardrobes consist of bikinis for all occasions. Based on increasingly deranged dreams — dead bodies in plastic bags, twisted corpses with broken backs, catatonic, pale-faced children — Anna and Alex come to the conclusion that Rachael was responsible for their mother’s death. So Rachael, the bimbo, has to go.

Meanwhile, their father is oblivious, the film’s most aggravating flaw. Strathairn, who was recently Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck, plays his author as a practical guy, but so clueless it’s amazing he could even conceive children, let alone raise them past their terrible twos. He never notices their cries for attention, the daggers shooting from his new girlfriend’s eyes, the manipulation of Anna’s moods by Rachael’s snotty attitude. Later, when the rules have changed and the father’s role has been reversed, his actions still seem cold and distanced. If there’s ever a sequel (The Re-Invited maybe) it should be about Anna’s legal emancipation from her dad, the heartless jerk.

Poor Anna. She’s the film’s scapegoat, and it all seems too cruel to young actress Emily Browning, the teen version of Angelina Jolie who gave an energetic performance in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Anna’s perception is shaped by her dreams, which is Uninvited’s most manipulative cheat. If dreams are absolute truths, then the movie shouldn’t be able to swap them in and out like socks. As we’re beaten over the head with these subjective plot-altering dreams, we’re distanced from the one character we’ve come to like in a film that’s not all that likeable.

Anna’s whole messy affair — none of which is very scary, I should add — ends with a twist that redefines everything that happens before it. I’m convinced these endings were designed to create repeat business for movies that most people will have regretted seeing once, nevermind twice.