UNINVITED COMING TO REGION 1 DVD

Panik House Entertainment, the folks who are responsible for the upcoming "Pinky Violence Collection, have announced that their next release will be a Region 1 DVD of the Korean horror movie, THE UNINVITED, which is my favorite Korean horror flick. They're looking at a January 2006 release date.

Here's something I wrote about UNINVITED for Film Comment a while back:
"Lee Su-Yeon’s THE UNINVITED (2003) features traditional character development but it only serves to make things worse. Written and directed by yet another first-time director, the script caused an industry-wide buzz before it was released. Audiences felt let down by the movie’s refusal to hew to horror movie conventions and the movie rapidly vanished from screens.

When yuppie architect, Kang, gets off the subway at his last stop one night he notices two little girls asleep on the seats but he doesn’t tell anyone because he doens't need the hassle. The girls turn up dead the next day and before long his wedding plans are interrupted by their silent ghosts sitting at his ultra-chic dining room table. When neighbor Jung-Yung (a puffy-eyed narcoleptic who lost her baby in a grotesque accident; played by Jeon Ji-Hyun, thoroughly soiling her pert, brassy image from MY SASSY GIRL) sees the ghosts as well, he begs her to help him remember his blanked-out childhood. Big mistake.Turns out he killed some people as a kid and, of course, he’s adopted. Cue nervous breakdown.

Shot in a sterile apartment complex, full of homicidal mothers and suicidal shut-ins, THE UNINVITED gives us characters completely alienated from authentic experience. The Confucian order of the universe is totally overturned as the film builds to a harrowing final betrayal, and it becomes a statement of complete and utter emotional isolation. Although it’s immature in its one-sided depiction of a world paralyzed by grief, THE UNINVITED’s articulation of this world is passionately accomplished: its sound design, script, cinematography and acting are all of a masterfully fabricated piece. With nothing allowed to stray from its laser-guided mission to make us believe that we are utterly alone, it feels like the conclusion of a journey Korean horror’s been on for the past six years."