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Somewhere around the end of the first trimester of the year 2020, the entire world abruptly halted due to a pandemic. This sudden stop in our daily routines—professional, personal, or otherwise—offered a welcome respite, allowing us to take a moment to breathe deeply and reset, either to continue our regular lives or to change altogether. However, this worldwide catastrophe and the confinement it entailed also caused many struggles, both personal and interpersonal, as the interruption of every and all activity meant the termination of the human workforce who could no longer fulfill their responsibilities in the new home-office modality.
The arts also suffered because of this. Particularly those that require mass attendance, namely theater, film, and music concerts, causing production delays, postponing scheduled events, or simply resigning to seeing a project be totally scrapped regardless of how advanced it was in its making. British theater director Simon Godwin was one of the endless industry professionals whose work was directly affected by the closure of public spaces. At the time, he was working on a modernized production of William Shakespeare’s eternal classic, the tragic story of starry-eyed romance, “Romeo and Juliet”, starring, at the time, rising stars Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor as the titular pair of doomed lovers.
The defiance of the entire company, which refused to give up on their work, led the team at Britain’s National Theater to repurpose the play and adapt it into a film version—a modest project that could be shot following the required sanitary guidelines. This decision marked the institution’s first venture into filmmaking, giving birth to “Romeo & Juliet” (2021), a little film that marries beautifully the best of both mediums, film, and theater, into a riveting hybrid of impossible love.
A similar thing occurred with Nadia Conners’ “The Uninvited”, originally a play that she had been developing for some time before the aforementioned events made it impossible for it to come to fruition, as there was great uncertainty on whether theaters would re-open or remain closed for a long time. This restriction gave Conners the idea, or perhaps the excuse, to switch her medium of choice, opting to forego her habitual safe space, the stage, in lieu of foreign uncharted territory, i.e., film sets. Regardless of this understandable external motivation, there is little to no reasoning behind such a decision. The film version of “The Uninvited” plays like a… play, without the proper translation from one medium to the other, instead hoping that what works on one simply applies to the other. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.
Everyone knows how anxiety-inducing hosting a party can be. Everything from the preparation of the event—appointing a date and securing a venue, selecting the decoration, arranging the catering service, or choosing the perfect outfit—down to the development of it—like making sure all of the guests feel welcomed and enjoy themselves, that the food and drinks are not only enough for everyone but also tasty, and making sure everything goes as planned—is a true nightmare. Party planners deserve way more recognition than they get now that I think about it.
Throwing an intimate party for an elite crowd of Hollywood socialites only raises the stakes. These people are generally accustomed to the very best of treatments and expect nothing less. This is why from the opening moments of Conners’ narrative film debut “The Uninvited” (2024), Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) is utterly stressed as she readies to welcome important guests into her Hollywood Hills residence for a fateful night that turns more life-changing when the unexpected presence of an old woman – actress Lois Smith as the titular uninvited – who crashes the soirée claiming to live in the house, forces her to see in the mirror, triggering a downward spiral into an existential crisis of sorts.
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It does not help that alongside her hostess duties for the night, she must also attend to her domestic responsibilities, which include dealing with her inconsiderate husband, Sammy (Walter Goggins), and taking care of her restless child. Their family life may seem picture-perfect from the outset, but in reality, it is incredibly fractured by the typical insidious issues. Her marriage, for instance, is at a stage in which the spouses are incapable of having a bilateral conversation unless they are bickering, of course.
It comes as no surprise that Conners names Ingmar Bergman’s probing treatise on the societal institution of matrimony, “Scenes From A Marriage” (1973), as one of her main sources of inspiration. Speaking of which, the film would greatly benefit from utilizing the visual style that the Swedish master developed alongside long-time collaborator, cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who became famous for photographing conversations in extremely tight close-ups that flooded the screen with raw emotionality. This visual proximity would heighten, and therefore enhance, the incredibly uninvolving emotional stakes we’re presented with.
Another cinematic treatment that the film could use to its advantage is that of German New Wave director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose carefully choreographed staging and composition added texture, depth, and intrigue to any scene with lengthy dialogue. Instead, the verbose exchanges between whichever characters share the screen at any given moment during the film’s runtime are captured in dull, static shots that switch size, from medium to master frames, at random, depriving the dark revelations and enlightening realizations of any weight whatsoever.
The second film about a middle-aged actress sidelined carelessly by the industry she devoted her life to, Conners’ film is much more muted and indirect than Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror satire “The Substance” (2024), which takes a far more ballistic approach at denouncing ageism, misogyny and the obsession with unattainable beauty standards that women are subjected to on a daily basis. Here, this is only addressed early on and then gets tossed aside and ultimately discarded along with multiple other thematic concerns that are brought to bear but not developed beyond their casual mentioning.
The idea for the story first came to its writer and director while she was struggling with what she believed was post-partum depression. Having to abandon her career life to take care of her child triggered in her a deep examination of everything she thought to be true about the female experience. As for the inciting incident, Conners also experienced it firsthand when a lady in her old age appeared at the front gate of her house thinking it was her home, all while she was getting dolled up for a party. So it is safe to say that both the plot of the film and its underlying themes come from a genuine place. However, despite having complex ideas that deserve to be addressed and discussed in order to better understand them, the film does little to invest us in all the drama.
An assortment of side characters—including an important director (the always reliable Rufus Sewell), an up-and-coming actress (Eva De Dominici), a nanny (Kate Comer), and an old flame and famed A-lister (Pedro Pascal making some time in between his more high-profile projects)—come in and out of the story without any real motivation, making their interventions feel extremely contrived but also barely registering as real individuals and not just tools in Rose’s character development. So does the plot progression, which moves in uninspired and tedious ways, having its lead character spend some time with each guest, all of which help her gain wisdom.
Conners is hardly the first theater director to transition toward the realm of cinema. From old-school masters like Orson Welles and Elia Kazan to more recent directors such as Josie Rourke and Celine Song, there is an endless list of this type of career trajectory, all with varying degrees of success. Conners’ debut unfortunately showcases the worst of traits, as “The Uninvited” is quite stagey in all the wrong ways, entirely lacking the qualities inherent to the screen rather than the stage. Before committing to another film endeavor, Conners should extensively ask herself why the story she wants to tell must be made for the screen—which is to say, what specific element about the medium is key to telling the story in question.
