**
South Korean horror film about two sisters who are convinced their stepmother means them harm and decide to fight back. Nothing, however, is what it first appears to be in this jigsaw of a movie that spends so much time establishing its creepy atmosphere that, when the revelations finally start coming, it becomes one momentum-killing flashback after another during its interminable conclusion. The cinematic equivalent of an incoherent joke followed by an explanation. Not that there aren't some nice moments -- involving ghostly scares and human cruelty -- but something is obviously wrong when a horror movie's principal accomplishment is leaving you thinking you understand the plot. More or less. Remade in America as The Uninvited (2009).
South Korean horror film about two sisters who are convinced their stepmother means them harm and decide to fight back. Nothing, however, is what it first appears to be in this jigsaw of a movie that spends so much time establishing its creepy atmosphere that, when the revelations finally start coming, it becomes one momentum-killing flashback after another during its interminable conclusion. The cinematic equivalent of an incoherent joke followed by an explanation. Not that there aren't some nice moments -- involving ghostly scares and human cruelty -- but something is obviously wrong when a horror movie's principal accomplishment is leaving you thinking you understand the plot. More or less. Remade in America as The Uninvited (2009).