The concept of the haunted house is one of the most successful entries of the horror genre due to the fact that the very space we live in could harbor some "unpleasant horror from the world beyond". It's been morphed constantly to meet the demands of the times, and reached a pinnacle in 1979 when Ridley Scott released his now contemporary classic: ALIEN. And in that particular "haunted house" -- itself a spaceship -- you couldn't just get out and leave. And something very physical and hungry was out there within the shadows, waiting....
THE UNINVITED offers no such horrors: in fact, aside from the premise that the mansion overlooking the Cornish coast that a brother and sister (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) have purchased off a whim has its own turbulent history and an invisible guest, it's far from truly scary. Closer to a dark mood piece, it acquiesces itself with an extreme subtlety closer to the style that Robert Wise would utilize in THE HAUNTING (without any intrusive voice-overs, thankfully) and keeping its own touch light and dryly funny, it manages to lift some of the heaviness to a point where it's imperceptible.
As a matter of fact, THE UNINVITED is an unlikely template of the type of horror seen in Asian films such as RINGU (and most notably in its remake THE RING), where the story seemed to be heading one way, throws in a red herring that until the end seems to be a much bigger player than it really is -- here, in the rather sinister figure of Ms. Holloway, clearly patterned after Mrs. Danvers and played with deadpan silkiness by Cornelia Otis Skinner (herself physically similar to Judith Anderson and in a lesser degree, Claire Booth), and turns the tables on the viewer in a neat one hundred degree angle. For that, it's clever and awfully effective film filled with rich atmosphere in the Film-Noir style, even when its thrills are watered down to a lull.
Much has been made about the lesbian subtext that is referenced to in THE UNINVITED. In a way, I can see it and I can't -- the unnatural attraction that Ms. Holloway sustains to the unseen Mary Meredith and the none-too-subtle designs she displays towards young Stella (Gail Russell) must have rung a bell. However, it can also be seen as the type of fixation that is closer to a borderline personality disorder -- where a person's sole reason of existence depends on that of the object of his or her attraction, which is always with a tinge of the impossible. It's, as I said, remarkably similar to the premise controlling the passion of Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA, but to a lesser degree. Whatever it may be, it's one of those "hints" of a gay-lesbian presence in a Hollywood who had, by then, decided to ignore "those" people even when major movie stars carried movies and won Oscars.
THE UNINVITED offers no such horrors: in fact, aside from the premise that the mansion overlooking the Cornish coast that a brother and sister (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) have purchased off a whim has its own turbulent history and an invisible guest, it's far from truly scary. Closer to a dark mood piece, it acquiesces itself with an extreme subtlety closer to the style that Robert Wise would utilize in THE HAUNTING (without any intrusive voice-overs, thankfully) and keeping its own touch light and dryly funny, it manages to lift some of the heaviness to a point where it's imperceptible.
As a matter of fact, THE UNINVITED is an unlikely template of the type of horror seen in Asian films such as RINGU (and most notably in its remake THE RING), where the story seemed to be heading one way, throws in a red herring that until the end seems to be a much bigger player than it really is -- here, in the rather sinister figure of Ms. Holloway, clearly patterned after Mrs. Danvers and played with deadpan silkiness by Cornelia Otis Skinner (herself physically similar to Judith Anderson and in a lesser degree, Claire Booth), and turns the tables on the viewer in a neat one hundred degree angle. For that, it's clever and awfully effective film filled with rich atmosphere in the Film-Noir style, even when its thrills are watered down to a lull.
Much has been made about the lesbian subtext that is referenced to in THE UNINVITED. In a way, I can see it and I can't -- the unnatural attraction that Ms. Holloway sustains to the unseen Mary Meredith and the none-too-subtle designs she displays towards young Stella (Gail Russell) must have rung a bell. However, it can also be seen as the type of fixation that is closer to a borderline personality disorder -- where a person's sole reason of existence depends on that of the object of his or her attraction, which is always with a tinge of the impossible. It's, as I said, remarkably similar to the premise controlling the passion of Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA, but to a lesser degree. Whatever it may be, it's one of those "hints" of a gay-lesbian presence in a Hollywood who had, by then, decided to ignore "those" people even when major movie stars carried movies and won Oscars.