(6) THE UNINVITED with Emily Browning, Arielle Kebbel, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Massar and Jesse Moss. Directed by Charles and Thomas Guard. (The Boardwalk).

STEVEN (David Strathairn) waits patiently for his daughter, Anna (Emily Browning), who is being released from a mental hospital, after being admitted a year earlier after suffering a breakdown.

Losing her invalid mother (Maya Massar), in a fire, was the cause of her breakdown.

Before leaving the hospital Anna‘s therapist advises her to “finish things that she has started”, implying bury the past so that she may move forward.

Upon returning to their lake house Anna discovers that her father has a new girlfriend, Rachel Summers (Elizabeth Banks).

Anna immediately takes a dislike to Rachel and sets out to find out who exactly she is.

The first night home, Anna has a vision of the burnt corpse of her mother warning her about Rachel, by pointing in her direction, with a bell around the wrist she used to summon help when she was alive.

This sparks the start of ghoulish visions for Anna.

At a diner in town, Anna sees three ghostly figures of children which appear to be another warning to her.

The next day Anna finds Matt (Jesse Moss), who agrees to tell her what really happened the night her mother died.

Later that night in her room Matt is about to tell Anna about the fire. Instead he turns into some kind of deformed creature with a broken back. After fishing Matt‘s body from the river the coroner concluded Matt broke his back in an accident while on his way to see Anna.

At Matt's funeral, Anna sees the same ghostly children from the diner. They lead her to their graves in the woods. When returning home, she Googles their names, just to find out that they were killed a few years earlier by their teen nanny.

Anna suspects that the teen nanny is Rachel, who is now trying to repeat the pattern of murder.

Even with the scary scenes, which give you a bit of a jolt, I expected more from the movie.

The twist at the end surprised me as I never saw it coming, even though the film was filled with a lot of horror movie cliches.

With all this said, I would recommend this film to any one who is a lover of suspense or horror films.

There are worse ways to spend 87 minutes of your time. – Reviewed by Shafeeka Abrahams brahamss@avusa.co.za