The Uninvited (15)

Hollywood talent agent Sammy and wife Rose, a former actress and now a stay-at-home mother, excitedly prepare for an important gathering at their home connected to Sammy's work. The guests of honour are Gerald and his new talent, Delia. A confused older lady named Helen materialises outside the party, mistakenly believing that she lives at Sammy and Rose's home. The wife hurriedly tries to get rid of Helen while keeping the festivities in full swing.

LondonNet Film Review

The Uninvited (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Regrets? Dysfunctional characters in The Uninvited have a few and they aren’t shy about airing them during a garden party where rich, fabulous and famous guests rub shoulders with waiting staff hungry for their big breaks. An unexpected arrival at the front gate throws the exclusive, invite-only soiree into disarray and catalyses various revelations and self-reflections that usher some attendees towards enlightenment and leave others foundering in the dark. Writer-director Nadia Conners, wife of actor Walton Goggins, contemplates Hollywood’s enduring obsession with age and beauty through the eye of a female protagonist played by Elizabeth Reaser, who has sacrificed professional ambitions to become a stay-at-home mother…

In a jaunty opening sequence, she receives a telephone call from her agent with feedback from her latest acting audition: “They said you’re too old to believably play the mother of a six-year-old child. It felt tragic.” Predictably, the crestfallen character has a son around that very age and Reaser swallows the irony with glum resignation. On-screen chemistry between Reaser and Goggins’ disconnected spouses is convincingly fraught but Conners’ script veers into wordy melodrama that sounds unnatural and dialogue-heavy sections betray the project’s origins as a stage play. Pedro Pascal broods in a Hawaiian shirt in a dramatically significant supporting role.

Talent agent Sammy (Goggins) and wife Rose (Reaser) prepare to host a party at their Hollywood Hills home to impress guests connected to Sammy’s work. Fissures in the marriage are apparent. “Do you listen to a word I say?” snipes Rose. “If I’m being honest, I drift,” calmly responds Sammy as babysitter Tracy (Kate Comer) monitors the couple’s young son Wilder (Roland Rubio). The first person to arrive is a confused elderly lady named Helen (Lois Smith), who claims to be looking for her husband and mistakenly believes she lives at Sammy and Rose’s house. Sammy urges his wife to get rid of the interloper.

Helen’s friend Barbara (Annie Korzen), listed in an address book, kindly agrees to collect her. Meanwhile, husband and wife bicker about their invited guests including Sammy’s key client Gerald (Rufus Sewell), Italian ingenue Delia (Eva De Dominici) and Rose’s old flame Lucien (Pascal), who is embracing sobriety after a brief stint in rehab. Tensions rise and Sammy pleads with his wife to support him: “Can you please just be on my side for one night?”

The Uninvited feels like a glimpse inside a rarefied world that Conners and her husband know well. Smith’s heartfelt performance as an apologetic gatecrasher trapped in a fog of muddled memories is the fulcrum for politely barbed satire that occasionally draws blood. Conners’s picture is most compelling when characters are in emotional freefall. Their self-inflicted misery is good company.

– Sarah Lee