Deconstructing a Hollywood Remake

The Uninvited vs A Tale of Two Sisters

This article contains spoilers about both films. Proceed with caution.

Based on Kim Ji-woon's 2003 chiller, A Tale of Two Sisters, the Guard Brothers' first feature, The Uninvited (2009), is, at its core a mediocre fright film aimed at 13 year old girls. And although it comes rather late in the seemingly endless J-horror (or, technically K-horror in this case) remake cycle, an examination of the differences between the two films actually manages to provide some interesting insights into the differences between Asian and North American culture and audience expectations.

The first major difference is, of course, the title. The Korean title of A Tale of Two Sisters is Janghwa, Hongryeon, which can be translated literally as "Rose Flower and Red Lotus". The Korean title comes from the Joseon-era folk tale on which it is based, about two sisters put upon and eventually murdered by an evil stepmother. The English title brings the relationship between the two sisters to the forefront, whereas the Korean title is actually the names of the two girls from the folk story. For the Hollywood remake, the name was changed to The Uninvited, which takes the girls out of the picture all together and puts the emphasis clearly on the haunting/ghost aspect of the story. It also thoroughly confuses those familiar with Lee Soo-youn's 2003 Korean horror film, 4 Inyong Shiktak, which was released in North American as The Uninvited. Other than both dealing with ghosts and being uncommonly elegant and moving, Lee's film and Kim's have little in common.

Another key difference is the shift in focus from the older, more assertive sister in Tale to the younger, more fragile sister in Uninvited. In Tale, Soo-mi (Lim Su-jeong) has just been released from a mental health facility after suffering some sort of nervous breakdown (which is never really explained), but upon returning home she immediately becomes confrontational with her step-mother, Eun-joo (Yum Jung-ah) and protective of her younger sister Soo-yeong (Mun Geun-yeoung. Eun-joo, frustrated by Soo-mi's insolence, turns her anger towards the passive Soo-yeong, which only fuels Soo-mi's teenage rage.

In The Uninvited, it is the younger sister, Anna (Emily Browning) who was institutionalized after a suicide attempt stemming from her having witnessed the death of her terminally ill mother in a (hilariously spectacular) fire. Upon returning home she immediately seeks out her older sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel), who is sassy, irresponsible and bikini clad for much of the film. It is also Alex who first raises suspicions about the role their father's new girlfriend, and incidentally, their mother's nurse, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), played in their mother's death.

While a subtle difference, making the more "innocent" sister the protagonist plays directly into North American notions of purity and victim-hood. Were Anna to have been immediately confrontational with Rachel, one assumes that the audience would have felt less sympathetic towards her. This serves mostly to increase the shock of the final twist, which also greatly differs from the that in the original film. However, making Anna the "virgin" also better aligns her with the North American horror tradition of the "last girl".

Differences in attitudes towards sex and sexuality are also clearly evident in the way the protagonists are portrayed in the two films. Uninvited opens with a scene of Anna making out with a boy, but she ultimately pulls away from him as he starts to become aggressive. Older sister Alex, on the other hand, is implicitly more sexual and Rachel is clearly portrayed as a sexual temptress, complete with a drawer full of lacy underthings and a metallic dildo. Anna is also given a love interest who seems to hold a key piece of evidence to what really happened the night of her mother's death, a character that is completely absent from Tale. In fact, the concept of boys is altogether absent from the Korean film and burgeoning sexuality is hinted at. It could even be argued that sex and issues related to female sexuality are the major themes of The Uninvited, since it is implied at the end of the film that Anna's psychosis was triggered by her having caught her rather engaged in a sexual act. Not really that surprising as this is a standard preoccupations of North American horror films.

The mood an tone are also strikingly different between the two films. Whereas Tale is a baroque fairytale set in a dark and mysterious house, Uninvited is much more glib and sunny which ends up undermining much of the intended horror. Tale is as much a tragedy as it is a horror film and the prevailing feeling of deep sadness inherent in the way it was shot and scored, as well as the actors' performances, are what ultimately fuels the horror aspects. It functions largely as a mood piece with minimal dialogue, while Uninvited didactically spells everything out for the audience and includes such charming lines as, "[s]he's like a crack whore, only without the dignity."

However, it is the treatment of the mentally ill that most distinguishes The Uninvited from its Eastern inspiration. In Tale, Soo-mi's father (Kim Kap-su) is a doctor and his inability to help his daughter is what fuels his frustration. Although we are never told what kind of doctor the father is, it is clear that he feels he should be able to help her, either as a doctor or as her father. His emotional impotence and his compounded guilt is heartbreaking, yet his silence in the face of what is revealed to be an incredibly ill girl could be seen as too foreign to a spoon-fed Hollywood audience. And so in Uninvited, the father (David Strathairn) is given the much sexier occupation of writer and his frustration with his daughter is portrayed more as a result of the disruption to his life her return has caused than out of any real concern for her health. Because his exposure to to the true depth of Anna's illness does not happen until the very end of the film, we never get the sense of heartache that Tale exploited to such marvelous effect.

In Kim's film, the fact that Soo-mi has multiple delusions only serves to reinforce the horror imagery and the audience ultimately feels great sympathy towards her, especially at the end of the film. The Guard Brothers' take, on the other hand, feels much more like a case of bait and switch and the result is that the viewer feels manipulated and unmoved. Whereas Soo-mi is a girl struggling and ultimately unable to come to terms with tragedy, Anna is a cartoon psycho, straight out of central casting.

Whether the failings of The Uninvited are the result of studio interference, mediocre film making, or the Hollywood need to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator is unclear. But the original premise and a capable and talent cast could have yielded something much more interesting. But then again, I guess it already did.