Springtime arrives in Montrose and you decide to host a party. The house has been thoroughly cleaned, food and drink set out on long tables, flowers cut and arranged in vases, toddler ready for bed, bathrooms checked for towels, music selected and first track playing. You own a small business in Montrose and someone critical to its future success is coming—you really need tonight to go well. Just as you finish getting dressed, one of the guests, a friend who has turned up early to help, tells you that an elderly lady is knocking at the door insisting she lives at the house and demanding to be let in. She is “The Uninvited” (Foton Pictures), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse.
The movie has two story arcs. One is the party itself—set in Hollywood—and the fallout when guests drink too much alcohol and either become grandiose boors or claim to be madly in love with each other. The second is the panicked response to the sudden arrival of the confused elderly lady, who lived in the house decades ago—how personal values drive people from the same family, all placed into an identical emergency, to propose diametrically opposed solutions, some more compassionate than others. The second of these is the more interesting by far, and an eventuality that even those of us who hate parties will surely encounter at some stage in our lives.
Helen, played by Lois Smith, is the uninvited guest. As a natural consequence of her confusion, she magnifies the emotional separation between married couple Sammy, a Hollywood agent, played by Walton Goggins, and Rose, an actor who struggles to land parts because she is too old, played by Elizabeth Reaser. Any minute now, an “A-list” actor, critical to Sammy’s ambition to launch his own independent talent agency, will arrive. If Sammy can sign up this actor, his future will be made. The stakes for Sammy tonight could not be higher. Helen’s arrival is his worst nightmare. But Rose reacts with astonishment: there is no alternative but to drop everything and help, “You can’t treat [Helen] like she is a grave inconvenience.” Helen repeatedly asks for her husband, but, after calling several of Helen’s phone book contacts, Rose is told that he died some years before.
This is a marvellous moment in the film that has really lingered. The audience suspects, perhaps even knows, that Helen lost her husband some while back. But, even so, the scene is so sad. Surely this isn’t the first time Helen has called out for her husband since he died. Rose has a split second to decide what to do next. Should she tell Helen, knowing that she likely won’t remember (and has been told before)? And, as it dawns on Rose that getting Helen out of the house has suddenly become much more challenging, we sense that the crisis within her marriage is about to deepen very quickly too. Amongst the names in the address book, who is the next-of-kin? How to proceed now? Sammy’s drug-fuelled agitation builds—not getting his way, he tries harder to control the uncontrollable, with predicable unintended consequences.
The filmmakers mistakenly felt the need to exaggerate the negatives of the characters in order to drive home the near-impossibility of achieving any sort of consensus between them. But this underestimates the audience. The characters become too superficial, and the acting too hammy. Take Sammy, who is the most narcissistic, self-absorbed, whining, inconsiderate, greedy, entitled, name-dropping, vain, even vile man imaginable. There is nothing at all in him to like. And, if it’s possible, we like him even less as the film proceeds and more is revealed about the disgusting attitude he has towards Rose (the “carrot muffin with ricotta topping” line is particularly vicious), or the patronising way he sneers at those on whom he looks down (like the bartender to whom he offers a “$200-glass of bourbon”). The exaggerated nastiness in Sammy’s character contrasts with over-indulgence in Rose, who manipulates Helen’s arrival into a neat excuse to do precisely what she wanted to do in the opening moments of the film: skip the party. Helen has developed the plot significantly at this point by exposing all-too-real dishonesty within the marriage. Rose also hints at a curious but underdeveloped sub-plot concerned with anti-aging strategies amongst the ultra-wealthy (“your plastic surgeon,” “the plastic surgery face,” new potions for eternal youth). I felt that the filmmakers backed away from what could have been a worthwhile interrogation of the link between these obsessions, wealth and social class.
Elsewhere, the ex, Lucian, is played by Pedro Pascal as a lovable cad. Lucian was previously in a relationship with Rose, and in one of the funny scenes thrown up by Helen’s arrival, Lucian tells Rose that he is still in love with her, Helen overhears, and, because she can’t tell lies, tells Sammy about it. Rufus Sewell convincingly plays the grandiose drunk.
Many people who have a relative suffering from dementia somehow find themselves endlessly strategising amongst themselves about how to manage the situation. It becomes a full-time job. Decisions that need to be collectively taken are unquestionably influenced by expectations of inheritance, relative wealth, and bases of power within families. What “The Uninvited” does rather well is truncate all of this into one evening, nimbly replacing real-life family circles with characters in the house. The resentments which build over years between relatives develop in hours in the movie. Rose and Sammy don’t agree on what Helen should be told, who should be called, how long she should be looked after for, whether to intervene when she wanders into the busy street outside, or how to treat her when she feels unwell. It all sounds very familiar.
Where Hollywood really struggles, however, is in giving a voice to people who are not white, ultra-wealthy party-goers living in Los Angeles. “The Uninvited” ultimately falls down because it stays within Hollywood’s smug comfort zone—promoting the deeply held, but wrong-headed, belief that we are universally envious of those who live this way (although admittedly perhaps some people are). In Montrose, the problem is more the struggle to secure help for the elderly-poor in that desperate moment, in circumstances where we feel overwhelmed by competing pressures of time and money. A more rigorous film which tells this story is more likely to induce critics to write “A-grade” reviews. Still, for now, we can ponder whether, in the first minutes after we open the door to “our” Helen, we will be Rose or Sammy.
Adam Poole
10 May 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
