The Uninvited is a 2009 American remake of the 2003 South Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters. It is unrelated to another 2003 Korean horror film and a 1944 American film of the same name.

The Uninvited movie poster

Anna Rydell (Emily Browning) returns home to her father (David Strathairn) and sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), after spending time in the hospital following the tragic death of her mother (Maya Massar). Her recovery suffers a setback when she discovers her father has become engaged to her mother’s former nurse, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). That night, Anna is visited by the ghost of her mother, who warns her of Rachel’s intentions. Together, Anna and Alex try to convince their father that his current fiancée is not who she appears to be.

Development

In 2002, producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald produced the hit horror thriller, The Ring, a groundbreaking remake of the Japanese film RING (Ringu, 1998) that signaled the start of a new trend in genre films – the thought-provoking thriller. They would subsequently produce the film’s successful sequel The Ring Two in 2005. Since first starting this new cycle of Asian horror film adaptations, Parkes and MacDonald searched for a project they felt was as ingeniously conceived and executed as The Ring, and finally found it when producer Roy Lee brought the original Korean hit movie on which The Uninvited is based to their attention.

As A Tale of Two Sisters was playing in US theaters, directors Tom and Charlie Guard acquired the English language remake rights. The Guard Brothers studied at Cambridge before launching careers as commercial and short film directors for such clients as Nokia, Euro Disney, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. The Korean remake is their first feature film.In June 2006, DreamWorks announced that a deal had been set up for the US version, Tale of Two Sisters (advance press materials drop the “A” from the English title). The new movie is a presentation of DreamWorks and Cold Spring Pictures (Disturbia), and is produced by Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald (The Ring, The Ring Two) and Roy Lee (nearly every Asian movie remake in recent memory). The screenplay was written by Craig Rosenberg (After the Sunset, Lost), Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard (The Great Raid).

In the early of 2008, the title needed to be changed. The working title was originally A Tale of Two Sisters like its predecessor, but the final title was confirmed to be The Uninvited in an announcement made in March.

The film was released to theaters on January 30, 2009.