The Uninvited
       
                      
Director: Lee Soo-yeon
Year: 2003
Rating: 5.5
Country: Korea
This dirge mournfully edges slowly into horror, the supernatural and madness leaving the viewer unsure of what they have just seen. I sort of wanted to grab the debut director Lee Soo-yeon and ask him to please explain this to me. I suppose watching a film leaving you with more questions than answers can be a good thing, but also a frustrating one. He certainly creates a moody atmosphere with some beautiful haunting photography that sticks to you like a bad dream that you can't shake. But atmosphere is mainly what it has. The plot is a muddle with bits and pieces from other sub-plots that eat away at the heart of this film.  Part of this of course is what the viewer brings to a film. When you see two ghosts sitting at a table, you fully expect that will be the focus of the film. But it isn't really - or perhaps it is but it goes off in other directions.



Jeong-won (Park Shin-yang) seems closed off from everything around him. He is engaged to be married to Hee-eun (Yoo Sun) but his responses to her are listless and evasive. She wants to put a photo of him and her on the wedding invitations. but his minister father has only one that is from his childhood. My antennas immediately wondered about this fellow - on the subway a woman puts her two little girls into seats - one next to him - and I thought, stand up asshole and let the mother sit. He doesn't and then at the last stop he wakes up and rushes out and sees that the two girls are still sitting there by themselves. But he does nothing - no calling up the police - just goes home. Then he reads that they were poisoned by the mother and are dead. Infanticide is a theme in the film. Maybe, at that point you would call the police and say what you had seen. He doesn't. Is that why the next night he sees them sitting at his table. Dead ghosts. Just sitting. Not haunting. Just there. Why at his table? Is he hallucinating in guilt? Did they simply come home with him? But it scares the shit out of him and he runs out and stays away for a few days.



Meanwhile, the film shifts to Jeong-yeon played by Jun Ji-hyun in her first role after winning the hearts of a nation with My Sassy Girl. This role could not have been much more different. She is suffering from sudden fainting spells, depression, hysteria and nerves - Jeong-won witnesses her fainting on the street and just keeps going. She turns out to be a parishioner of his father's and after a service he volunteers to drive her home which happens to be in the same apartment complex as his - and she has another fainting spell. He takes her to his apartment and lets her sleep. As she leaves, she tells him, you should put those children at your table to sleep.



She sees them too. He isn't going crazy or is it a mutual insanity. He keeps confronting her with questions but is unable to. She has her own issues. Her friend dropped her baby and Jeong-yeon's off the balcony and the fainting began. The upstairs neighbor who loves cats and made Jeong-yeon pet it though she hates cats - jumps of the balcony and she looked right at her as she passed. You keep wondering because you expect a few big reveals that Jeong-yeon actually killed the neighbor or the children - but it is never clear. Is she crazy? Homicidal? The two of them finally get together but never explore why they are seeing these dead girls - but she is able to break through his memory fog and show him what happened when he was a child. It is horrific. There was so much in this film that could have gone somewhere, but it just sits there never explained.