The Uninvited

Plot synopsis:
Kang Jung-won (Park Shin-yang), an interior decorator, is overcome with inexplicable anxiety as his long-overdue wedding with Hee-eun (Yoo Sun) approaches. One evening, Jung-won falls asleep on the subway on his way home. He is barely able to wake up at the last station. As he comes round, he sees two young girls asleep on the seat next to him. He cannot wake them before he has to jump off as the train leaves the station. He arrives home to find that his wife-to-be has bought them a new metal dining table.
The next day, Jung-won is working when he hears on the radio that two young girls were found poisoned on the subway. In the course of fitting some lights in a ceiling, he is hit by falling debris and cuts his forehead. After a trip to the hospital for some stitches, he goes home to find the two dead girls seated at his new dining table.
Jung-won, who is now working on renovating a psychiatrist's office, bumps into Jung Yeon (Jun Ji-hyun), a patient on her way out of a therapy session. She has been receiving treatment after her friend, Moon Jung-sook (Kim Yeo-jin), killed both of their children a year earlier. Another accident leads to Jung-won taking Yeon back to his apartment where she too sees the apparition of the dead children.
Having been tormented by nightmares and the hallucinations, Jung-won is desperate to find out something about the apparitions that haunt him. Yeon runs away refusing to help him, so he searches through the patients' records at the clinic to find out more about her. Using the information he succeeds in persuading her to help him uncover his past. Jung-won discovers that he had been born with shamanic abilities similar to Yeon and accidentally killed his father and sister.
Unfortunately, he suffers the consequences rediscovering his past. His fiancee Hee-eun suspects that he is having an affair and leaves him. Jung-sook is convicted of the murder of Yeon's child, but she suddenly commits suicide as she is leaving the courthouse. Shocked, Yeon calls Jung-won who comes over to console her. He talks to her husband, Park Moon-sub (Park Won-sang), who suspects that it was his wife, not her dead friend, who killed their children.
Jung-won, caught up in his desire to deny his past and his fear of Yeon, turns down Yeon's cry for help when her husband tries to have her committed to a mental hospital. His refusal crushes Yeon, who throws herself off Jung-won's apartment building. Jung-won sees her as she falls. In the final scene, Jung-won sits in his dust-covered apartment. Face lined like an old man, he brings a steaming dish of food to the dining table and sits down.
His dining table is full, not with the family he had been planning but the apparitions of the two poisoned girls on the subway and Yeon.

Tags: paranormal, flashback

Review:
This Is Based On A True Story ?.
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.
If you want the real story, check out the re-enactment on "Haunted Lives" or the investigations on "Sightings.".
This movie was based on a true story the Johnsons from Tuckerman AR ...Charles and Sharon Johnson ...house was built on a cemetery ...these are my parents the house is the real deal still standing today ...there is also a short story wrote about my family and lots of newspaper articles that support evidence ...very cool to be a part of this and have a film wrote and directed about my family ...course it's made for TV a lot of it didn't happen ...we are actually twin brothers not brother and sister ...the hauntings were real ..the were very real ...I actually started a paranormal investigation team as a result of all this ...if your looking for the real story behind this movie ...look me up Off The Grid Paranormal ...easy to find ....
I'm amazed to see how low this movie scores in the IMDB rating (currently 4.3), it is a very good movie; it's like a light version of Poltergeist in which the main character is taken for crazy when she speaks about the paranormal things occurring at her home.The tension gets higher and higher until the last moment.
Best of all, it's based on true eventsI certainly recommend this movie.
Pattie and Charles and their two young children Molly and Jonathan move into a brand new house in suburbia.
Soon, little colored lights are flying around and the bath tub is belching up blood.
When little Jonathan nearly drowns in the same tub and is levitated above it right before Pattie's eyes, she seeks assistance from a local whackjob psychic woman.
Their investigation leads them to a little old lady who informs them that she once lived on the land where the new house now stands, and that there is a family plot on the property.
She also informs them that her brother was murdered many years ago by their father, and now it seems as though the wicked ghost has the same intentions for Jonathan.
But Charles, concerned for Pattie's mental state, has her admitted to a hospital for psychiatric observation and takes the children home.
Pattie now has to find a way to escape from the hospital and save her son before history repeats itself.Yaaawwn.
This is a very blatant rip-off of Poltergeist, watered down for television and starring a bunch of people who look like they should be on the Lifetime Afternoon Movie instead.
How the hell Beau Bridges ended up in this silly mess is beyond me - he deserves better.
The special effects are lame, the dialog is so corny it's painful and any seasoned horror fan is going to be bored stiff by this predictable tale.
The Uninvited, with Beau Bridges.
I read a post by aesgaard41 of Hendersonville, TN, about this movie.
This person wrote: " There's the bodies buried on the property (it's not built on a cemetery as some commenters have thought)".
I just watched this movie, for the second time, and it IS on a cemetery.
The bodies are buried around a huge, contorted tree and Beau Bridges digs around the tree looking for proof that it was a burial ground.
He finds several headstones before running into the house to his children.
I really like movies with Beau Bridges and the woman who played the mother showed love for children.
The first is one I have of many horror movies, is that the characters take too long to react.
A few seconds may not sound like a long time but if your child was drowning in a tub, you wouldn't stand there in the hall and watch for a few seconds before deciding to run and help him out.
The second is that the family proves the house is haunted and even wins a lawsuit (it's written at the end of the movie) but the house is shown being sold again, and still haunted.
The family doesn't stop the next homeowners from suffering the same fate.I just read another post on it.
Khultman from New York writes: "the poltergeist, of course, turns menacing".
The "playful supernatural force" he/she refers to is the first of 2 spirits in the house.
The first one is a playful little boy, the second is the father who murdered him.
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.
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.
But this definitely wasn't a movie I would buy..
I thought that the performance of all of the actors, especially Sharon Lawrence.
There was definitely not a dull moment throughout the entire movie.
If you haven't seen this, then i suggest that you find some way to find where it will be shown..
When I first saw the title of this film on my T.V. list I expected the classic movie made in the forties.
It started out in color which meant it was just a remake.
Much like the original, a tree is very important.
Then just as quick as a flash of lightening, anything classic about this film disappeared.
Suddenly the plot started to remind me of "Poltergeist." I also loved the first 2 "Poltergeists" but this was NO POLTERGEIST.
The ending was really the best part of the film.
I know that the writers of this film lost in their battle for something original..
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"!
Unimaginative Rehash of Older Films.
I believe the writers were inspired by older films to write this script and it's characters - unimaginative.
The little boy will smile and follows the ghost sometimes (he reminds me a little bit of the boy in The Shining at times).
The father with an axe, although Beau Bridges' characters didn't go crazy he had to use an axe on the door, reflections of The Amityville Horror and The Shining here.
The psychic and the ending of the film reeks of Poltergeist.In these types of films, why is it the neighbors will never see all the bright blinding "strobe lights" and all the screaming from the family being terrorized?
This usually happens at the end/climax of the film.
LOL.This movie has a family-styled film written all over it...
especially the colorful orbs from the little boy ghost.
And the cutesy moments that happen, in particular with the mom, psychic and ghosts.It's far from being a good haunted house movie but it's got a few moments of being fun.
- Jeff Bridges is good in this one, he seems like an average dad with a wife seemingly going "mad".5/10.
I loved this movie.
it was filmed 4 houses down from me, in my friend sean's house!
like the boys playing with water guns and the girls roller'blading!
...but it was called Poltergeist and it really scared the bejeezus out of you and stuck with you for days.You probably understand the story line at this point from the other reviews here, but if not - here's a summation, with plot spoiler: Dad, mom & two kids move out into the burbs...
Dad's gone A LOT for work...
Mom & son are seeing "things" around the house (lights, movements, bloody water)...
Dad doesn't believe her...
Mom doesn't try too hard to prove her point...
Mom stumbles across a psychic that tries to warn her of the harm coming her way...
Dad has mom hauled off...
Mom escapes from the hospital only to save her son in the last possible moment from the baddie while dad exclaims "I should've believed you!".
Yawn.This completely undisguised and unnecessary retelling of the Poltergeist story flips and flops like a fish out of water.
It's almost painful to watch, but for some reason it is just barely able to hold you for the duration of the movie although it's rarely startling and never frightening.Unfortunately, it's terribly clichéd and predictable from start to finish and it didn't have to be that way.
The two main actors (although Beau is missing for long expanses of the movie (probably for reasons of salary)) hold this stinker together, and the supporting cast does a fine job of helping them along the way.For whatever reason, the producer or director tried to insert some amount of levity at completely inappropriate times, and you could only notice this by the musical score becoming suddenly very "Looney Toons"esquire when there was terror afoot (note: I keep putting e s q u e after Looney Toons but it keeps auto-changing it to "esquire" and my corrections don't stick).
These failed attempts at wry humor were completely lost, and perhaps I'm the only one that noticed they even tried.Still, the special effects are well done and the music (aside from the unfortunate segues, above) is suitable if not sometimes sparse.
If you've got nothing else to do and the couch is having a wicked gravitational pull on you, then watch it but be prepared to be unimpressed overall..
Pretty awful - If Poltergiest was a Made For TV Movie.
This movie had to be made by liftime television for women, it just had that type of feel of one of their movies, i think it had some of the same actos too.
It was pretty bad all around, if this was supposedly based on some true story I'm pretty sure it didn't go down the way it was portrayed in this film.
If it did, then that lady's kid is one stupid child.
I mean, what kid goes down into a flooded basement and just sits down and plays in the water?
And the guy that played the father had to be the weakest human being on the planet for not being able to break through a door with a huge ax and pick, yet he was able to dig a huge whole to uncover the graves buried in the backyard - oh thats right, did I mention this is a rip off of poltergiest?
Its entertaining, thats true, not scary and I wouldn't mind any of these actors being killed by the ghosts in the movie but undortantly it didn't happen.
One of many TV movies that should never have been made.
Methinks somebody has been watching POLTERGEIST one too many times...as is the case with many, many mid '90s television movies, this is utter rubbish.
Throughout the film little happens, apart from a few inexplicable events.
Maybe Jan de Bont saw this when he was making THE HAUNTING.
Absolutely nothing here is original, and even the best scare, a bath overrunning with blood, has been taken from countless other films (THE SHINING to name just one).
The acting is poor and Beau Bridges should be ashamed of appearing in this one.
He also has a wife about twenty years younger than him.So, if your idea of fear is a few doors banging shut and a bath filling with water, then this film is for you.
Unfortunately the film makers saw fit to have a sickening "cute" ghost around too, appearing via some "wondrous" special effects of sparkling lights.
Every plot twist is predictable, every moment boring.
Dull, pointless and totally irredeemable, this is just another in a long line of television movies that didn't deserve to have been made..
The best performance in this movie is turned in by the possessed garden hose.
But it's the unexplained appearance of a watery vortex in the basement that really seals the deal on this unintentionally hilarious crapfest.I hope Beau Bridges and Sharon Lawrence were able to pay a lot of bills off after making this movie, because it sure wasn't about the "art".
I've read better dialogue on bathroom stalls.A few highlights:Note the psychic who does nothing throughout most of the movie except point out the obvious and creep people out when they first meet her.
Also note that the 80 year old woman who was half out of her mind had the cajones to stand up to the malevolent specter, but not the psychic.
Wh does every little boy in film from age 3-6 have that same bowl haircut.
Is it a SAG thing, something in the contract for all boys that age?Finally, watch for the rotary pay phone in the hospital.
I thought this movie was made in 1996, not 1946..
This film is so similar to Poltergeist, it's scary!.
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..
The Victim of the Haunt, aka The Uninvited,(1996) was a made for TV movie.
It was directed by Larry 'Shaw, and was written by Karen Clark, She gives us a decidedly feminist take on Poltergeist.
Even as The Uninvited I had no recollection of this I decided to give it a go,The, "Family moves into a house with a Dark past" genera was formulaic, even back then.
Oh, the changes we've seen, but not in the plot.The young couple here, Patty and Charles, played by Sharon Lawrence and Beau Bridges with their little ones, Jonathan and Molly, played by Alex Linz and Emily Bridges, move into a new home.
Daddy is always away at work, but Mom and the kids know that there is something not right with the house.
Formula plot point ahead.
Patty befriends a psychic reader, What is unusual here is the feminist slant.
It will be a woman's love that overpowers the forces of darkness,Favorite inevitable line, "Oh honey, I should have listened to you!" Six dreary stars out of Ten, the special effects must have seemed epic, not!