In the haunting suspense thriller "The Uninvited," a deadly battle of wills begins when Anna (Emily Browning) returns from a psychiatric facility and investigates the circumstances surrounding her mother's suspicious and untimely death.  While Anna recuperates from the tragedy, her father (David Strathairn) becomes engaged to Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), her mother's former nurse, and moves her into their home.  Anna's dismay quickly turns to horror when she is visited by her mother's ghost - crying out for revenge and pointing an accusing finger at Rachel.  When her father refuses to heed their warnings, Anna and her sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), look into Rachel's questionable past. 
But Anna may be underestimating Rachel - perhaps fatally so.

AN UNWELCOME HOMECOMING
When Anna's (Emily Browning) psychiatrist releases her from a sanitarium, where she has been recovering from an attempted suicide following her mother's tragic death, she is shocked that her father, Steven (David Strathairn), has become romantically involved with Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), her mother's former nurse.  Feeling betrayed and frightened, she seeks solace from her older sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel).  But Alex is strangely distant at first. As Emily Browning puts it, "Anna suddenly feels lost.  Ever since her father fell in love with Rachel, she doesn't know where she fits in with her family.  Even her sister, Alex, feels a little hostile towards her.  Worse, Rachel, who has taken over the house and seems determined to erase all memories of Anna and Alex's mother."
Eventually, Alex confesses that she felt abandoned by Anna and was left alone to cope with Rachel. Says Arielle Kebbel, "Anna is trying to tell her how awful life was in the mental hospital, but Alex is saying that life at home was pretty terrible as well.  It's interesting, because you can tell how happy Alex is to have Anna back, but she doesn't want to show it too much because she feels that she was deserted and left to deal with everything at home." 
"The fact that he's moved on so quickly from Mom devastates her," adds Kebbel.  "So she keeps telling herself, 'I'm over it.  I don't need Dad - or anyone else.  I've already been hurt enough.'"
Anna and Alex reconnect in their dislike for dad's new girlfriend, and given Steven's poor parenting skills, they feel totally abandoned.  "My intention is to be a good father to her now," observes David Strathairn, "but my career remains my top priority.  Before, family matters were attended to by my wife.  Now she's gone and I'm plagued with regret and guilt for not having been as involved in my children's lives as I should have.  So I'm trying to catch up, not only as a dad but as a friend, as a confidante, as somebody who can support Anna.  It's difficult, because I don't really know my daughter.  I have expectations of what a father-daughter relationship should be, but I'm really not prepared to handle it all."
Another barrier is his new relationship, which blossomed not long after his wife's death.  "I want to marry Rachel," admits Strathairn.  "I'm in love with her, because she brought me back from grief.  But Anna can't see it that way because she's lost her mother and now this woman is trying to replace her.  Anna is just not ready for that.  On top of it, she's a teenager, a time in life that is already delicate and tricky."
When Rachel tries to connect with Anna, the resentment turns to hate as Rachel tries to erase all traces of the family's past life.  But, according to Elizabeth Banks, who plays Rachel, it isn't that clear-cut.  "Rachel is very much in love with the idea of this family and of loving Steven," explains Banks.  "Rachel sees this as an opportunity at motherhood.  She's been placed in this horrible position of being the classic stepmother, of having to stifle her happiness at being in love and having a family because Anna clearly thinks she's moving too fast.  But from Rachel's perspective, all she wants is to help this family heal and be whole again.
"Rachel's attraction to Steven comes from his gentleness," Banks continues.  "She sees him as a wounded soul, someone who needs to be taken care of.  And he is very sexy.  He, in turn, treats Rachel with kindness and respects her intelligence.  Rachel is an equal in his eyes, and that's what she's been looking for her whole life."
Every loving moment between Rachel and Steven makes Anna feel more threatened.  "It's one of the major relationships in the film, but we don't really say that much to each other," says Strathairn.  "It's a pivotal relationship, yet most of it is conveyed with looks and touches, those in-between moments that truly cement a relationship."
The chance of any bond ever existing between Anna and Rachel is officially crushed when the young girl begins having terrifying visions of her dead mother reaching out to her for help and suggesting that Rachel may have caused her death.  Frightened and confused by the visions, and egged on by Alex's overt hostility toward Rachel, Anna becomes determined to assert her place in the house and protect her family.   
Rachel, who is more experienced in the art of manipulation, would seem to have the upper hand.  But Anna is not as fragile as her calm demeanor and delicate emotional state might at first suggest.  "Anna is a worthy opponent," says Banks.  "And Emily's approach to the role was very instinctual.  Both Anna and Emily look very frail and sweet on the outside, but they're actually very determined underneath."
That balance of vulnerability and strength in Anna is what attracted Browning to the role.  "Anna could have so easily been the victim character," says Browning. "But that's not how she's written.  She's not seeking sympathy.  Even though she's fragile, there's a toughness to Anna that comes through despite the terrible things that have happened to her."
As tensions escalate and Anna becomes convinced that Rachel was instrumental in her mother's death, she conspires with Alex to come up with proof of her deception - anything to convince her father he's made a terrible mistake.
Later, when Alex tries to comfort her, it's as if the past year has slipped away and Alex has resumed the role of protective older sister.  "When you have a younger sibling and you see they're in need," explains Kebbel, "you think, 'what can I do to fix this or help them?'   The bond between Anna and me is so strong that it's heartbreaking.  When you see all the compassion, love and trust they share, you begin to fully understand the scope of tragedy that has befallen this family."
The closeness that the sisters enjoy is a significant plot point for both Browning and Kebbel.  "The thing about sisters is you have an opportunity to share a bond that you don't have with anyone else," says Kebbel.  "Emily and I really wanted to bring as much of that to the storyline of following two sisters, which meant that the scenes where we shared the intimate moments of laughing together, crying today and sleeping side by side were very important to us in telling the story."
"Arielle Kebbel and I both used some similar slang," adds Browning.  "The directors and the producers were really open to us adding our own touches, which were small, but meant so much to us."
  As Anna and Alex dig into Rachel's past, they discover some potentially disturbing and damaging details.   Rachel doesn't deny any of it but makes it clear that Anna is treading in dangerous waters and warns her that she'd better be careful if she tries to come between Rachel and Steven.
Determined to end the terror, Anna and Alex conspire to expose Rachel once and for all.  But Rachel has her own ideas and the battle of wills between the two girls and their stepmother reaches a terrifying conclusion.

THE PERFECT HOUSE
Most of "The Uninvited" was shot at one location, a stunning waterfront property on British Columbia's Bowen Island, a short ferry ride west from mainland Vancouver.  "Eighty percent of the story takes place at the house, so we couldn't make the movie without the right one," says Parkes.  "It couldn't have been more important.  We scouted in Louisiana, an environment which is both beautiful and slightly threatening.  We had two houses, which were terrible compromises, but both of them fell through.  We had a difficult time finding anything that had both the connection to the story and the right logistical possibilities.
"But then we were lucky to find in Canada a place that seemed as if it had been built for our movie," he continues.  "It was perfectly evocative and suggestive of a family that is both welcoming and forbidding.  The fact that the house was within 30 miles of Vancouver was a greater plus than the minus of having to get everyone on boats to get them over there; water taxis and ferries are a way of life up there.  In fact, I don't remember ever having a more pleasant time on a location.  Getting onto a boat and having a cup of coffee and then going up the little pier and the stairs we built, it focused us.  We were isolated with one thing on our minds, which was making this movie.  It was great."
Well, most of the time.  The isolation did have one drawback: last-minute changes could not always be accommodated.  "There was a logistical concern," remembers production designer Andrew Menzies.  "Cell phone reception was bad there, which was a hindrance to doing our job.  But you also had to embrace that because there were always what we call fires on the set, where you needed something, emergencies, and if it just couldn't be done you had to work with what you had.  So, there was some creativity that came from limited choices."
For their part, the directors didn't feel limited by the movie's location.  By the time shooting had begun, notes Charles Guard, he and his brother had "been working on the project for more than a year, so we were pretty well prepared.  Even when things changed at the last minute, we still had the benefit of all that preparation and were able to work around it."
In addition, says Menzies, the location possessed a wonderfully eerie atmosphere during scouting.  "When we first came here it was at the end of winter, and it had such mood because of the lower lighting.  The clouds were off the coast and you couldn't see the mainland.  It had this claustrophobic feeling because of the fog and the clouds and the storms coming in."   
For the interiors, however, "We wanted to create a romantic house, a feeling of warmth and history and tradition where a loving and nurtured family lived," he continues.  "This would, we hoped, emphasize to the audience a feeling this was a close family unit now being violated by Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), this outside element."
The seeming contradiction of atmosphere dovetailed perfectly with the parallel storylines.  The first is the story of a wealthy, successful writer who has fallen in love again and is feeling optimistic after a terrible tragedy.  He lives in a beautiful home with an atmospheric backdrop.  But Anna's story is one of confusion and deception as she finds herself returning to a haunted house set in a foreboding landscape fraught with anxiety, secrets and danger.  So the mixed weather of an unseasonably wet summer in Vancouver turned out to be almost perfect for everyone concerned.
Almost perfect, yes, but not quite.  The house, a multi-million dollar dream home built about six or seven years ago, was a little too new and stylish to suggest the older house of the story, with its history and potential for peril.  "The owners have incredible taste," says Parkes, "so we had to take some of the chic away.  Our production designer, Andy Menzies, and the whole art direction team were pretty crack; we had very strong set-decorating people to give the house its particular character.  Things like the kitchen linoleum floor we put in.  And there was a big, beautiful center island that any cook would want, that we took out in favor of something more rustic.  We removed every stick of furniture and brought in our own.  We put a rug on the stairs and then wore it down to suggest the kids have been tramping up and down them for the last 15 years.  Small details are really important, particularly when you're working on a smaller canvas like this in which attention to detail can't be overemphasized."
In addition, the open-plan design of the home lacked the necessary claustrophobia required for many of the scenes.  Walls and doorways had to be added but pressure fitted in instead of nailed so as not to damage the home.  "Because it's a new house and very expensive, we weren't allowed to do a whole lot.  We couldn't do anything that we couldn't reverse," says Menzies.  "But we did what we could at a superficial level to take the newness out of it."
One item that did require more than just a superficial alteration, however, was the main stairwell.  "This was a detail in our pre-production that exemplified why we made the right choice with the Guard brothers," says Parkes.  "Tom and Charlie said that one of the iconic images in horror movies are staircases; there's something about them that sticks in our minds.  We had a great staircase but the banister had very thick pieces of wood with just little slats; we would have gotten a strobe effect when shooting through it.  And the guys were, 'Well, we have the greatest location in the world; want to take down the banister?'  So we did."
  They did it, fully prepared to restore it, in keeping with their desire to respect the architectural integrity of the house.  "We created a new banister to accommodate certain shots," Parkes continues.  "The directors were right: it became a really important part of the filmmaking.  I really admired these two guys who, considering this was their first movie, were that specific about the needs of the genre and pushed for something like this."
Luckily, says Andrew Menzies, the home's owner "has had film crews in here before; he knew that wear and tear would occur and that it could be repaired.  We had his builder come in when we tore out the spindles on the stairs, which was a major deal; and we arranged for him to redo the stairs when we left, so the owner would have exactly the same house when he returned."
Crucially, the house lacked one very important element - a boathouse.  With no suitable properties anywhere that contained one, the producers decided to build one from scratch.  It was a beautiful addition to the property, designed to blend in as if it was part of the original design; any homeowner would have been delighted to see it stay.  But that was not to be, since the story called for its destruction as Anna's memory flashes back to the tragic night of the fire.  The shooting of the fiery explosion met everyone's expectations, the flames bathing the darkened lake below with a fiery orange.  "It was a great moment," exclaims Parkes.   
Whether audiences pick up on the visual clues in the set design the first time they see the film is not important, because repeated viewings offer insights into how the film was constructed and how it is going to end.  "It's very complicated," says Parkes, "because, in a way, every scene is two scenes.  There is the scene the audience is watching, which has to have its own emotional reality, which has to be legitimate and appear to be moving the story toward what the audience is absolutely sure is the goal of the movie; but then it has to be this other scene, which is what's really going on.  And if we did our job right, both realities will exist in every moment of the movie."

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
THE GUARD BROTHERS (Directors) make their feature film debut with "The Uninvited," following up their award-winning series of short films starring Lena Headley about chance encounters in London.  "Inside Out," is the story of a market researcher who falls in love with a window dresser and won Best British short at the BBC Short Film Festival.  "Round About Five," a dialogue-free study of the minutiae of human attraction, completed the series and was showcased by Kodak at the Cannes Film Festival.

CRAIG ROSENBERG (Screenplay) is an Australian-born screenwriter/director who has written numerous screenplays for all the major studios, as well as directors such as Steven Spielberg and Wes Craven, and award-winning producers, including Art Linson and Neal Moritz.
Among his credits, Rosenberg wrote and directed "Hotel de Love" for Village Roadshow Pictures/Live Entertainment about twin brothers who run into a childhood sweetheart at a honeymoon hotel and compete for her affection.
Rosenberg also shared screenplay credit with Paul Zybyseski for New Line Cinema's "After the Sunset" directed by Brett Ratner.   Shot in the Bahamas, the action-romance involved the heist of a rare diamond being exhibited on a luxury liner and starred Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek and Woody Harrelson.  In 2006, Rosenberg wrote and directed "Half Light" starring Demi Moore as Rachel Carlson, a successful novelist who moves to a small Scottish village in hopes of moving on with her life after the death of her son, but is instead haunted by the ghosts of her past.
In television, Rosenberg has sold several pilots (including to Fox and ABC), and was on the writing staff of the hit show "Lost" (ABC/Touchstone).   

DOUG MIRO & CARLO BERNARD (Screenplay) grew up together in suburban Detroit and have known each other since they were eight years old.  They wrote "The Great Raid" for Miramax, which was released in 2005, and recently worked on the upcoming "Prince of Persia" for Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney. 

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