Set over the course of one eventful party, The Uninvited functions much like a play — kind of like what its characters, A-list actors coming together for a garden party, used to perform together back when they were coming up. It's a three-act ticking time bomb in which everything could unravel at any minute.
Writer-director Nadia Conners' script is made for actors to sink their teeth into, and The Uninvited sees just that, with some of Hollywood's top talent playing some of Hollywood's top talent. With Walton Goggins (who is married to Conners), Pedro Pascal, Elizabeth Reaser, Rufus Sewell, and Lois Smith, you can't really go wrong.
What eventuates is a night of home truths, revelations, and musings on our past selves, all set within the realm of a luxurious Hollywood home — and all the expectations that come with such a life.
What is The Uninvited about?
Throwing an expensive, catered party at their lush Hollywood home, former actor Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) and A-list Hollywood agent Sammy (Walton Goggins) are a married couple who know they'll have to be on their game for the next few hours. Sammy has deals to close, pitches to deliver, and new clients to scoop up — including Rose's ex, movie star lothario Lucian (Pedro Pascal).
Then, just as the celebrities arrive — including Sammy's current number one client, Gerald (Rufus Sewell), and glamorous ingénue Delia (Eva De Dominici) — an unexpected guest turns up in the driveway. Helen (Lois Smith) is an elderly woman who says she used to live in Sammy and Rose's house; she shows signs of confusion and fragmented memory as she enters their home.
Between taking care of Helen, making sure their young son stays upstairs in bed, and pouring honey into the ears of their influential partygoers, Rose and Sammy have many spinning plates to attend, heated conversations to be furiously whispered in their home's alcoves, and secrets to suppress.
The Uninvited is an actors' movie.
Conners' script allows the characters to slowly peel away truths about themselves and their connections with one another through mostly uncut scenes. Goggins and Sewell, as Sammy and Gerard, enjoy the most playfully scripted characters. For Sammy, his Hollywood career hangs in the balance, and Goggins brings his characteristic electricity to a desperate character clinging by his nails to the American dream. Seeing sharp-suited Sammy slowly unravel is truly a privilege; I would watch Goggins try and break into and out of his own bathroom, or watch Goggins and Sewell preach about creativity on a child's balcony over cocaine, every day of the week. Sewell's insufferable drug-fueled ascension into an actor's God complex is one of the funniest moments in the film.
As characters reveal themselves to one another, the stakes get higher, and Rose and Sammy draw begrudgingly closer to their most authentic selves — selves they've buried in Hollywood glitz and networking. But it's Sammy's total reliance on Rose for clout, for socialising energy, and for unconditional love (in that order) that sees their relationship strained.
For Rose, the sudden reappearance of Lucien brings up a significant identity crisis, sharpening her focus on the acting career she left behind, the heartbreak she endured, and her disconnection from motherhood. Conners' frank script gives her ample room to reflect. Reaser authentically builds a character mourning her past self while finding strength in maturity, creating a nuanced, grounded portrait of a complex woman the men in this film constantly put on a pedestal as a muse.
One such man? The truly perfectly cast Pascal as Lucien, Rose's all-consuming former lover. Here, the internet's boyfriend becomes the ultimate ex, the one Sammy needs to woo to represent, the one who broke Rose's heart, the one who turns up to the party newly sober and full of "unresolved feelings." Moving through the party in an outstandingly L.A. silk shirt as he delivers Conners' finely crafted construction of a Hollywood heartthrob out of rehab, Pascal convincingly plays the "one who got away" with flirtatious, romantic gumption. This understandably causes Rose sudden and not entirely unwelcome feelings of nostalgia every time their eyes meet — when he's not talking closely with young A-lister Delia.
One of Conners' through-lines of The Uninvited is Hollywood's obsession with youth. Rose perpetually compares herself physically and professionally to Delia (an understated performance by De Dominici), who initially rudely dismisses her host as a homemaker, though the two gradually find camaraderie. (Some of these moments feel somewhat shoehorned in.) In the first scenes of the film we see Rose standing in front of her bedroom mirror, focusing on her flaws — a sequence explained by her revelation that she retired from acting after being rejected for parts for being "too old."
And within this sense of generational difference and Hollywood artifice stands a character who sees it all plainly, despite appearing to experience the opposite. As Helen, Smith presents a woman whose memories may be fractured, but whose mind is sharp enough for her to act as a neutral commentator to the party drama. For the duration of the film, exactly what's going on with Helen becomes Rose's main priority, while Sammy sees their uninvited guest as a problem to be solved. Small fragments of Helen's life arise throughout the night, and her family's traumatic past begins to inform some of Rose and Sammy's issues. Meanwhile, Conners positions Helen as someone who manages to cut through the bullshit and deliver uncomfortable truths to complete strangers. It's a role Smith plays with complexity, nuance, and a deadpan humour that keeps the film afloat.
The Uninvited almost tries to do an It's a Wonderful Life.
As the realities of Rose and Sammy's life come out over the course of the film, it's clear The Uninvited is taking cues from the master of the self-assessment genre, It's a Wonderful Life (inspired by the original master, the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol). In fact, at one point, a very high Sammy exclaims to Helen that the amount of reality checks he's being delivered in one night is, in fact, an IRL version of Frank Capra's 1946 classic (in which James Stewart's character is shown by his guardian angel what life would be like for his loved ones if he never existed, giving him a new appreciation for his life).
The Uninvited doesn't push this concept quite as far as that, but the one-location nature of the film's life-changing revelations and unfinished business dabbles in the same realm. It's not a party I'd want to attend, given everything that happens, but it's one that's crucial to the characters in accepting that life doesn't always turn out the way you thought it might. Perhaps the most welcome non-guest of all, Helen, should be a must at all gatherings.
