By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter
Movie Review
Uninvited
Directed by Dan Villegas
IT’S interesting to think about why revenge thrillers are so popular. Through them, we get the satisfaction of enacting justice in a way that isn’t possible in the real world. Uninvited does this through the character of a mother whose love knows no bounds and is forced into its deepest, darkest depths after her daughter is cruelly taken from her.
Unfortunately, because it’s a genre we know so well from movies and teleseryes, the main thing that sets apart this tacky revenge thriller from others is its cast. It is ultimately a vessel for stars like Vilma Santos, Aga Muhlach, and Nadine Lustre to showcase their acting chops, all while dressed expensively and cursing like it’s a mafia film.
Uninvited follows Eva Candelaria (played by Vilma Santos), who seeks revenge on billionaire Guilly Vega (Aga Muhlach) for killing her daughter years before. Disguised as a guest, she carries out her plan while attending his lavish birthday party, where she encounters his own daughter, Nicole (Nadine Lustre).
Santos enthralls in this solemn turn as an unlikely mother exacting justice while Lustre is engaging to watch as she toes the line between cynicism and defiance. Muhlach throws the biggest swings here, delivering campy B-movie levels of acting as the film’s one-dimensional villain (sometimes effective, sometimes too much).
While this film might not convince everyone, it definitely convinced the theater I was in. Uninvited is a crowd-pleaser. It has a long, emotionally manipulative build-up and an illogical extended climax designed to elicit cheers from the crowd as the lead character serves vengeance. It relies on drawing out audience sympathy, from its flashbacks all the way to its violent conclusion, which succeeds only if we completely suspend disbelief.
(Spoilers follow.)
An old woman with no family members just teaching herself to fire a gun with precision? Only to get to the party and not actually have a plan (despite the implication that she spent years on one)? A Big Bad that personifies evil and doesn’t even hide it? A party full of important people that somehow have no bodyguards roaming the premises? The film shapes up to be a collection of cliches that quickly veer into tacky territory.
The film opens with a reminder that Warner Brothers is distributing this, the second Philippine movie after last year’s hit, the messy folklore horror film Mallari, also by Mentorque Productions. While Uninvited is a collaboration with Project 8 Projects, a pattern still emerges that stylish genre films are what Warner Brothers is looking to distribute. Dan Villegas’ direction and Dodo Dayao’s script more than capably supply that here, but a bit more polish would be appreciated.
A clear stand-out is the party sequence, well-put-together for Santos’ Eva to react to, her seemingly polite demeanor in the face of a grossly extravagant show of an evil man’s wealth hiding pent-up rage and grief that boils just beneath the surface. The flashback scenes woven into the narrative are all right, carried by solid actors Gabby Padilla and Elijah Canlas despite their brief roles as victims. The worst and most gruesome of their scenes could’ve been depicted with a little more subtlety, coming off as gratuitous just to serve as fuel for the final act’s fiery revenge.
What’s really unforgivable, though, is how it all came down to predictable tropes and twists, the mediocre execution really showing as Eva’s revenge unravels but just as quickly somehow ends up successful. The kills feel rushed through, except for the final one, and the potential to explore the roots of crime and violence and the hypocrisy of the wealthy lasted only for a few superficial scenes.
An underutilized dynamic was that of Santos and Lustre’s characters, both being women and on seemingly opposite sides at first — a victim’s mother and a perpetrator’s daughter, both imperfect and struggling to make sense of this cruel world. An intriguing chemistry was established only to be rushed through in the span of one or two scenes.
While Uninvited is enjoyable, it could have been a more impressive feat for the revenge thriller genre, which is a tired one at this point. This was a decent attempt, but ultimately still fell short.
MTRCB Rating: R-16
