The preparations for a grand L.A. party in the Hollywood Hills are underway. There’s fancy food to lay out, outfits to change into, and an aura photographer to set up. The couple at the heart of the event—Sammy (Walton Goggins) and Rose (Elizabeth Reaser)—are in a tempest, sniping at each other and trading pithy quips as they get ready. Just before their guests arrive, an elderly woman shows up. She wasn’t invited. In fact, no one knows quite who she is. Helen (Lois Smith) appears confused at the front of their home, and Rose takes on the responsibility to see that she’s looked after and tracks down someone she knows to pick her up, on top of making sure the couple’s young son, Wilder, makes it to bed. As Sammy greets the guest of honor Gerald (Rufus Sewell) and his aspiring new talent Delia (Eva De Dominici), a new uninvited guest arrives, Rose’s ex and a rising but troubled star, Lucien (Pedro Pascal). The evening of misremembered memories and secrets brings out more hard truths, more than anyone bargained for at a party.
Nadia Conners’ “The Uninvited” is a busy drama full of heartache from unfulfilled dreams, crumbling aspirations, and resentment. Conners, who is married to Goggins and looks to have taken some loose inspiration for the story from their life together among the Hollywood set, wrote a melodramatic screenplay, where some of the characters’ emotional moments feel better written for a soap opera than in life. There is tension in almost every scene Rose and Sammy share, creating an antagonistic dynamic between the two, like magnets that somehow both repel and attract each other. Conners’ screenplay also struggles to find a balanced tone between her battling leads and the problems that come with guests, both invited and uninvited, creating a jagged sense of quick emotional changes.
However, Conners finds her creative stride in utilizing the set design to tell parts of the story, staging Rose and Sammy in such a ways as to reflect the growing distance in her relationship or how Rose keeps disappearing into the background of her own home, just as she’s openly complaining about the state of affairs that has forced her to choose motherhood over her career. Throughout the evening, Rose is constantly prevented from joining the very party she organized, as if torn between her duties as a mother and caretaker for Helen and hosting. In fact, one of the best moments of “The Uninvited” belongs to Rose unloading about how lonely and isolating motherhood can be to Delia, who innocently responds, “I thought you liked motherhood.” It’s a lot more complicated than that, as over the course of the film, we learn that Rose has also undergone an abortion and her dearly devoted husband hasn’t always been honest with her.
Conners also explores how the entertainment business treats women and how motherhood forces some working professionals to alter their lives. In her conversation with Rose, Delia gently suggests learning from Rose about the part she’s taken on that Rose originated on the stage. Rose explodes with anger and frustration as it wasn’t she who quit the industry, so much as the industry shutting her out for her age. Compared to an ingenue like Delia, who has her whole career ahead of her, men aplenty, and the possibility of a new life stage ahead, Rose looks burnt out, while Delia is quite literally glittering in a flashy gold dress. There’s also a sense of the present-day anxiety coursing through Hollywood, that now is the time to batten down the hatches and not rock the boat, a sentiment Sammy finds when he tells someone of his next steps. The tawny hills of tinseltown are not safe from the changing headwinds.
The film’s sizable cast enhances the evening’s dramatic turn of events. Reaser’s exasperated performance may be kind of one-note compared to Goggins’s character’s epiphany, but it rings true through the confines of the couple’s mansion. Her counterpart, Goggins, exemplifies a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown, struggling with his shortcomings and communication, realizing just how much he stands to lose if Rose walks out on Sammy. Rose is either incapable or unwilling to believe Sammy’s profuse declarations of love, and at times, his own behavior and temper get in the way of their ability to reconnect. The marriage is clearly headed for the rocks (if it’s not already there). There’s a real sense of hurt in each performer’s face when realizing how far away they’ve drifted from one another.
Although only a supporting role in comparison, Pascal’s Lucien saunters about the party, looking out for the one face he wants to see—Rose’s—and stays mostly out of Sammy’s view. A hotshot actor who’s hit a bumpy streak, he wears a Hawaiian shirt and a sad, puppy-eyed stare. Also an uninvited guest, he unpredictably rolls in and out of the story. Meanwhile, Helen is lost in a sea of unreliable memories, and she continues to confuse Sammy for her husband, something the Hollywood agent at first loudly rejects, but later softens, inviting her to dance with him as if it were the last time. “It’s a requiem,” Helen says before taking his hand. “Does it matter?” Sammy responds with a charming welcome, finally stepping into the role of caretaker he’s neglected, possibly throughout his lifetime.
Conners’ first narrative feature is a rocky start but not without some promising notes. Her work between production design, thematic elements in the script, and the film’s ensemble make “The Uninvited” an engrossing watch, even if the emotional edges feel too uneven. As with Sammy’s experience with a risk-averse entertainment establishment, films like those about women, motherhood, and aging are among the ambitious big swings we may see less of in the future. It would be a shame for the industry to become so risk-averse as to blend in with the beige curtains and couches that populate the Hollywood Hills and produce only new “sure bet” movies that wouldn’t have anything to say.
