Rating: 3.5/5
Jung-won falls asleep on a train — he wakes up just in time for his stop, but as he gets off, he sees two kindergarten-aged kids sleeping on the train with no one else around. Before he can think, the doors close, so he goes on his way
At home, his fiancée, Hee-eun, has bought a table for their future family — a lit stage where they can talk out their feelings
The next day, the news announces the discovery of a dead 5-year-old and 6-year-old on the train. Later that night, he sees their bodies sitting at the new table
Jung-won encounters Yun, a woman with narcolepsy he gives a ride to, and she passes out in his car. When she wakes up, she mentions the kids at the table — she can see them too
The story shifts to Yun, focusing on an infanticide trial with her friend Jung-sook. Yun witnessed Jung-sook intentionally drop her baby from the railings of her high-rise apartment. But her testimony is called into question as it involves Yun having the power to show Jung-sook a repressed childhood memory — a memory that she believes contributed to the murder
As Yun and Jung-won get to know each other, it jeopardizes his future with his fiancée. But he believes in Yun’s abilities and asks her to do the same for him, putting together puzzle pieces he knew about and several he had forgotten, and his life is irreparably changed
The Uninvited are the memories we refuse to acknowledge, the painful truth that makes life unbearable, the ghosts of our regrets — our minds protect us from these memories when they’re intense enough, but her power unearths them whether they can handle it or not
The violence in this is brutal — it does not shy away from showing you people hitting pavement or trucks crushing babies
The plotting is a little complicated, and I felt lost a couple of times — I condensed the events of the movie for the above summary — but it all came around by the end
The film ranges from devastating to borderline silly, but the vision for this story is unlike anything I’ve seen. I don’t know if it all works, but it’s certainly a memorable experience