Thursday Movie Picks: Movies Adapted from Movies of Another Language

Thursday Movie Picks: Step Families

A Tale of Two Sisters

Directed by Ji-woon Kim.

2003. Rated R, 115 minutes.

Cast:

Su-jeong Lim

Jung-ah Yum

Geun-Young Moon

Kap-su Kim

Seung bi-Lee

Su-Mi (Lim) comes home from a mental institution to a sister who idolizes her, a stepmother who hates her and a father who's confused by her but hopes she can come to grips with the event that got her committed in the first place.

It starts off like a teenager vs. stepmother melodrama but creepy things start happening, each a little creepier than the last. Before you know it you find yourself trapped within a horror movie that doesn't necessarily want to scare you but to screw with your head really badly. And yes, by the time its all said and done the movie along with your brain has been twisted into a knot. The capper is a wonderfully ambiguous ending, open to all sorts of interpretation. The whole thing would've fell apart if not for two outstanding performances from our leading ladies. Lim as Su-Mi is positively brilliant and Yum as the stepmother ranges from the evil stepmom to a hysterical psycho, to wildeyed and fearful and even a few moments as a reserved professional. It's truly remarkable work.

It may start a little too slowly. Fans used to thrill-a-minute hack flicks with body parts flying everywhere might not give it the chance it deserves. It doesn't help that scaring you isn't really the movie's aim. Disturbing you is, but it works its way up to it rather than diving right at your jugular. Also, that ambiguous ending I love might be too vague for some. It will surely leave some scratching their heads wondering what they just saw.

Whoa...wha...where'd that hand come from?

This is for people into psychological horror flicks, having far more in common with the simmering build-up of Rosemary's Baby than the slice and dice meat-grinding of Friday the 13th. When the movie ends you'll have to decide what you think happened and no matter what conclusion you come to, its twisted. I highly recommend watching this in favor of the American remake, The Uninvited. Subtitleophobes beware, we're speaking Korean.

The Uninvited

Directed by Charles Guard, Thomas Guard.

2009. Rated PG-13, 87 minutes.

Cast:

Emily Browning

Arielle Kebbel

Elizabeth Banks

David Strathairn

Maya Massar

Kevin McNulty

Jesse Moss

Heather Doerksen

Dean Paul Gibson

A year or so after her mother died in a horrible fire, Anna (Browning) comes home from the mental institution. Of course, she still has ghastly visions and nightmares, a whiny older sister and dad's new girlfriend, and mom's ex-caretaker, appears to be...e-e-evil...muwahahahahaha...ahem...sorry. Anyhoo, it's a remake of the Korean movie A Tale of Two Sisters.

Whenever Anna starts seeing stuff, we get some fantastic visuals. There's not a drop of blood until very late in the movie but the sights are arresting, nonetheless. The twist at the end has been done before but its still fairly effective and almost enough to redeem the movie.

Unfortunately, the movie just plods along, re-enacting bits of better horror movies we've already seen. Though it's a remake of A Tale of Two Sisters, the movies that most readily come to mind are Pet Sematary and The Sixth Sense as it borrows heavily from both. Even if you don't see that comparison, there's another major problem: Elizabeth Banks is horribly miscast. She's supposed to be creepy, even a bit of a scary prospect for a stepmom but she can't quite pull it off. This is no knock on her acting ability in general, but she just doesn't seem to have a real dark side to pull from. It's too easy to tell that she's manufacturing vaguely mischevious facial expressions and delivers many of her lines flatly, mistaking monotone for menacing. The overall effect is we don't believe she had to do much of the conniving attributed to her to get into dad's bed. She's simply the hot blonde hanging around after his wife died; a wife that couldn't give him any for quite awhile anyway. Sorry to be blunt. Speaking of the dad, he's played by David Strathairn whom I respect a great deal as an actor. However, he seems to be slumming for a paycheck.

I will say this: the wanna-be boyfriend's back bends at a rather impressive angle.

Fans of The Sixth Sense will likely eat this up and proclaim it an awesome movie. For me, it was way too formulaic, moved way too slow. Seriously, I had no idea 87 minutes could take so long. Still, the last 15 minutes or so elevates the rest of it, making it an overall decent watch that comes up a bit short. Personally, I'm going to seek out the original.

MY SCORE: 5/10