The Uninvited Guest (2004) User Reviews (32)

Lurking out for number 1

[doctor13 · 7/10 · 3 March 2007]

Okay, this is what I think happened (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!): Felix and Vera have broken up, and he is lonely. His neighbor, Martin, who is constantly trying to find things to do to avoid his wife Claudia since the accident which has left her paralyzed, discovers the tunnel in his basement and tries to figure out where it goes. This leads him to Felix's house, where after scoping out its street location, Martin decides that the tunnel ends in his neighbor's basement, so he contrives a way to get inside. He pretends to need to make an urgent phone call, and once inside, Martin asks Felix if he has a basement and upon learning that he does, he returns to his own house, where his wife Claudia locks him in their basement.

Martin, realizing that he will die of insulin shock if he doesn't get out, uses a pickaxe on the wall of the tunnel hoping to escape into Felix's basement. Felix hears the pounding of the pickaxe on the wall and is being driven crazy by the noises, which Vera believes is a loose bedroom window shutter banging in the breeze. Felix and Vera make love, but Felix later finds her missing from their bed. He goes to the kitchen, where he hears the voice of Claudia talking to Martin about being discovered by Bruno echoing through the tunnel into his house, but he mistakenly thinks that it is Vera talking to the intruder. He enters the kitchan to find her alone. Vera, naturally, has not heard the voices and doesn't know what Felix is talking about, so she gets angry at his accusations and leaves.

Felix becomes more paranoid by the thought that the man is still in his house, so after the accidental death of Mrs. Meuller (the dog was just running upstairs and her fall WAS an accident), he acquires a gun and goes home where he sees the shadow of an intruder in his attic. He shoots them sight unseen, then in a fit of vengeance, locks up his house so the stranger will die inside and he'll be rid of him once and for all. Felix destroys his alarm system in the event that the intruder gets a door or window open but is too weak to escape, the police will not be summoned.

Felix drives to a spot in the neighborhood to wait while his captive dies, but 2 kids see his drawing of Martin and recognize the man. Felix goes to Martin's house and breaks in, returning the favor, but soon becomes obsessed with Claudia, who (possibly in Felix's mind) resembles Vera. Bruno, a friend of Martin's, is in unrequited love with Claudia, and when they realize someone is in the house, they chase Felix into the basement, where he discovers the tunnel. He follows it and finds Martin, dead, then escapes back into his own house through the hole Martin has started. Wounded in the back by Bruno, Felix has to know who he shot in the attic and he drags himself to the door where he sees through a hole she made trying to escape, Vera lying on the floor, wounded and bleeding to death. She had returned to his house, using her keys to get in, to look for his portrait of her. As Felix watches her, he is shocked to hear her talking to her unborn fetus, which is undoubtedly his child.

Does this sound cohesive? Did I miss anything?

Such an original thriller...

[rainking_es · 7/10 · 4 July 2006]

Is it possible to live in somebody's house hiding all the time and avoid that the inhabitants there detect your presence? Well, that's the question this original story deals with. "El habitante incierto" keeps the audience on the alert, 'cause you don't really know what's going on. That plot remind me of Ki-Duk Kim's "Bin Jip" (but that's the only point in common between these two movies).

The movie has a good script, though some dialogs are rather affected and there are a couple of characters that are not well defined. Anyway, the film as a whole really thrilling and brilliant, and the actors are quite reliable (specially Mónica López who plays two different roles).

In short: a nice choice.

*My rate: 7/10

What an unexpected twist at the end

[Misss25 · 7/10 · 11 July 2022]

Spanish movies never disappoints you to give thrills and twists. How it started and ended felt like riding a roller roaster. It's actually quite dark.

The movie evolves with a guy named Felix who is a timid person who lives in large house. He is always scared and thinks someone might be in his house. Once he helped a person who's desperately looking for phone and let him entered into his house. But,the man left the house without sign. Since then Felix is assuming, he might not left his house, he must be hiding somewhere in his house. Gradually, he lost sleep and drives arounds and sleeps in his car. Will he able to get away from from his timidness? Is he hallucinating? Or someone actually living in that house?

Mystery , terror , intrigue about a couple who has broken up and the mysterious events subsequently happen

[ma-cortes · 7/10 · 26 November 2014]

The same producers , Mar Targarona and Joaquin Padró , who ulteriorly will make ¨The orphanage¨ ¨The Julia's eyes¨ or ¨Los Ojos De Julia¨ , ¨X3pd¨ , and ¨The Body ¨or ¨El Cuerpo¨ bring us another unsettling film , this ¨El Habitante Incierto ¨ or ¨The uncertain guest¨ . The film contains tension , thriller , drama , mystery , plot twists and shocks , including decent scares with tense terror sequences especially in its final part , in a creepy denouement , near of the end . It deals with an architect called Felix (Andoni Gracia) who has just split up with his fiancéé called Claudia (Monica Lopez) and inhabits a big mansion in the great city of Barcelona . Then a stranger into your house to use your telephone , while he has been patiently waiting in the kitchen , he finds out how many hiding places there really are at his home . But are there enough to hide another individual , a rare parasite of living space ? . The premise is the following : whether Felix being stalked by an strange visitor or is Félix really going nutty ? Open the door to your worst nightmare .

This suspenseful movie was produced by the successful Catalan producers Mar Targarona and Joaquin Padró ; it displays relentless thriller , intrigue , Kafkaesque incidents , shocks , hard-edged drama , twisted plot , creepy images and some gore when crimes take place . ¨The uncertain guest¨ is a motion picture that balances precariously over the dark comedy , ¨Psycho¨ Hitchockian intrigue , Michael Haneke's ¨Funny games¨ invasion genre and Michael Powell's ¨Peeping Tom¨ style . Despite its low budget the picture manages to be intelligent , intriguing and thrilling . The good thing about this film is that the directors made it on a shoestring budget only having to do one set , yet the movie works on many levels but is constantly reconfigured . This is an interesting flick as well as a superbly written script delving into the human psyche in such extreme situation . The overall result is chilling proof that filmmaker Guillem Morales can take us back into a house while delivering a completely different scare . Although is sometimes slow moving and stagy , however is entertaining for continuous suspense . The cast is frankly well giving fine performances , though little known actors , such as Andoni Gracia as insane Felix and Monica Lopez as wheel-bounded-chair Vera ; including brief performances from Francesc Garrido and director Agusti Villaronga . Sinister and mysterious atmosphere is finely photographed by cameraman Sergio Bartroli , being filmed on location , mostly interiors , in Valldoreix , Esplugues De Llobregat , Sant Cugat del Vallès , Barcelona , Catalonia, Spain . Suspenseful and stirring musical score by Marc Vaillo.

Spanish fantastic film has been having an incredible renaissance over the past 15 years. From Álex De la Iglesia to Jaime Balaguero to Alejandro Amenábar to Paco Plaza to Nacho Vigalondo, all range of horror, science fiction and fantasy has been pouring out of the country, to be embraced by cinephiles and cult film enthusiasts , and with ¨The uncertain guest¨ by Guillem Morales , the Spanish terror cinema advances more and more . This motion picture relatively cheap was professional and tautly written and directed by Guillem Morales who subsequently realized another hit titled ¨The Julia's eyes¨ also dealing with violent confrontation among two characters . The movie will appeal to suspense enthusiasts and twisted intrigues buffs . It's well worth watching and contains some really eerie scares and disturbing images . This is without a doubt a thought-provoking and thrilling film to be liked for suspense fans , turning out to be one of the most original Spanish movies of the last years . A new international version of 'The Uninvited Guest' is on its way along with remakes of Guillem Morales' Julia's Eyes The Orphanage' from Ja Bayona" and as well as a remake of Oriol Paulo's The Body.

a dwarf's vertigo

[chaos-rampant · 12 October 2011]

I like to imagine that money came in for this before the filmmaker had the chance to iron out the creases in the script and he just went ahead while the project was still hot and he could get it made.

It is half-way an interesting film, a more novel take on Hitchcock than we have seen from DePalma in ages; the prowling eye of the camera; the vertigo of assumed identities and deceived points-of-view; the projections in space of an obsessive mind. But a deeply flawed film that left me with a growing sense of dissatisfaction.

Our point-of-view is decidedly with a man who comes to think that someone else is hiding in his own house. The house itself is a spacious labyrinth of modern architecture so it's impossible to make sure; dark corners abound and the mind comes to cast in them its own shadows of doubt. The paranoid situation he's embroiled in becomes worse when he suspects that his ex is involved in some mysterious bargain where he is the victim.

The story has been set in motion long before though. There is a woman who has suffered a crippling accident and whose husband has grown distant from her, we get to find out about this later in the film when he does.

In the first house, physical space is what the mind fills in with its own chimeras. In the second house, it's what the mind fills with emotional pain, with distance as the space between hearts and affections.

It's in this second house that the man seeks refuge - where he comes to fill the space left blank by the missing husband - now by going into hiding himself, and so looking at his situation from the inverse point-of-view. Now we are what we were trying to apprehend in the first half, looking to evade capture from anxious eyes. So if the first house was the setting for a thriller, what was perceived from our end as holding elusive danger, here it's us causing the thriller to happen while from our pov it is recast as this exhilarating game of hide-and-seek. It makes sense to watch this as a dance or performance art; where one partner swings out of view just seconds before the other enters it, with both locked together in a ballet of appearances.

The man obsessively imagines himself as part of a relationship, and the film assumes a whimsical, light-hearted tone. This strangely underscores the fundamental creepiness of what is really going on.

There are two problems in all this. One is that it never makes any sense why our man behaves the way he does. Usually what Hitchcock did was that he would supply the doubt of an unreliable eye or unstable mind; here the guy seems perfectly normal and then acts completely unhinged.

The other is the ending, where the filmmaker stretches to explain for us the missing links of the story. We knew that the two houses were somehow linked, but it turns out that they were quite literally so. So instead of using mirrored space - and persons, there's two of everyone here and one woman seems to be the other's twin sister - as the means of examining abstract reflections, we're give pieces of a puzzle to put together. In doing so, whole swathes of the story collapse and what held elusive power by remaining just out of sight is made to be safely ordinary or, worst, downright stupid.

I wish the movie had stuck to its premise

[eddax · 6/10 · 7 September 2010]

Grr. I was really looking forward to this thriller since it has a high IMDb rating and a cool premise: "What if... you let a stranger into your house to use your phone, but while you've been patiently waiting in the kitchen, he just disappears...".

For the first half-hour, it looked like the movie was gonna deliver, but then it takes an abrupt turn into Bizarro Land, in which the stalkee in turn starts stalking some paraplegic woman whose husband had disappeared apparently while tunneling under their house to the initial stalkee's house for some reason. WTF. I'm not sure but I don't think everything was fully explained by the end. (I'm not sure because these mindf*ck movies often escape me.)

The movie was directed and written by Guillem Morales. I'll buy him as the former but not the latter. The direction was good. There was a lot of suspense, some involving scenes in which the ex-stalkee had to hide in a hurry while avoiding the paraplegic woman in her own home. Not as exciting as having to avoid a psycho killer in one's own home but Morales managed to keep my interest anyway.

This may help

[david_stephen30 · 9/10 · 28 May 2007]

This was an amazing film, it was fresh and original and really does keep you on the edge of you seat. From reading previous comments on here i think the following info my clear up a bit of confusion.

***FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS, DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM*** The kitchen scene where Felix hears his girlfriend talking to someone, saying that they cant hide forever and we have to tell him your inside, this is his girlfriend talking to her unborn child! she had not revealed to him that she was pregnant but was preparing to do so, she of course speaks to the baby again at the end of the film. Hope this helps. People should be forced to buy this film its so good!!

Artistic and original story reaching the level of fine classic literature! However, NOT horror.

[nitzanhavoc · 7/10 · 24 November 2012]

As a Horror fan, I was fairly disappointed that (yet again) another film was tagged/labeled as Horror when it simply isn't. I don't know how long it will take before it finally sinks in - a Thriller is not Horror. The difference might be less obvious and more subtle and nuance depended than the difference between Comedy and Drama, but it's there!

However, as a films fan and a literature fan, I was very pleasantly surprised. The Uninvited Guest has one of the best script/ideas I've ever seen. The way the protagonist Felix is haunted by the intruder in his house (or maybe just his paranoid thoughts of one?) and then ends up as such in a similar situation himself is artistic and almost genius.

The acting of the main characters is excellent, Andoni Gracia and Monica Lopez have really given lives to the script. The other characters I believe weren't important enough to director/writer Morales vision, they could have been given a little more depth. No harm done though, and the sensations of confusion, discomfort and bizarre anxiety in the audience weren't negatively affected.

The ending had a very nice (if somewhat predictable) twist, and could be understood in more than one way. All in all, while not exactly frightening or horrific, The Uninvited Guest is a clever, original and innovative film. Recommended!

A disturbing, uncommon thriller about the ghosts of loneliness.

[ana_figueres · 9/10 · 13 January 2005]

A young, thorough architect separates from his girlfriend and finds himself alone in a huge house. What could happen if an unknown man, after asking for using your phone at night, vanished from your living room while you were politely waiting in the kitchen? This is a rather unclassifiable movie. Between drama and thriller (and even a bit of disturbing comedy), it does look lushly filmed -Variety words-, well paced and definitely different from most first movies shot in Spain. Although the film suffers from a few hesitating moves, and it is not for lazy, easy-going audiences, it's well worth watching and contains some really bright, new ideas. One more turn of the screw around loneliness, voyeurism and affections - but a really interesting one.

A lot of impossible scenes.

[Hunky Stud · 6/10 · 13 July 2009]

This movie is a little creepy and scary, but it has a lot of scenes that don't make sense. Here are a few.

1. Why did Felix want to go live in the neighbor's home? Instead of being discovered, he could have just left the house easily.

2. How did Martin end up in his own basement when the hole was so small? And He was supposed to be living in Felix's home.

3. How did Martin die? No one killed him, he could have easily make that hole bigger and escape.

4. Felix shot his girlfriend without knowing, then lived in his neighbor's home for at least two days. And his girlfriend was still alive when he came back? Impossible.

5. When he was living in his neighbor's home, he ate all those things, and she didn't even notice?

Overall, this movie is out of touch with the real world, it is more like a fantasy scary movie if you don't want to think.

Undeveloped

[galensaysyes · 3/10 · 15 April 2007]

Someone, some day, should do a study of architecture as it figures in horror films; of all those explorations of weirdly laid out mansions, searches for secret passageways and crypts, trackings of monsters through air ducts, and so forth. Offhand I can recall only a few films in which architecture played a major role throughout--"Demon Seed," "Cube," the remake of "Thirteen Ghosts"--but it's at the heart of every story about a spooky house or church or crypt; it's all about the character and the affect of spaces, passages, and walls. So I was looking forward to this thriller where it promised to be central. The idea is this: An architect has built--actually, rebuilt--for himself a huge and rambling house; his wife has just left him, mainly because of his own self-centeredness, but also, it is intimated, because she can't get used to the place since he remodeled it. Living in unaccustomed solitude (real this time, rather than virtual), he comes to suspect that somebody else--a stranger who had come to the door one evening asking to use the phone and then suddenly disappeared--is living into the house with him; only the place is big enough so that he never sees him.

This is a good start for a melodrama, whose development one would expect to follow some such lines as these: After searching the house for the intruder a few times without success, the architect resorts to his blueprints to undertake more systematic searches, trying in various ways to surprise, intercept, or ambush the intruder, maybe by means of some special features he built into the structure. Meanwhile the intruder has discovered hiding places and back ways between places that the architect didn't foresee or doesn't remember. The movie would turn into a cat-and-mouse game, a hunt, a battle; and finally, in trying to trap the intruder, the architect himself would end up trapped in his own creation, in some way he didn't expect. Then he would be forced to think himself out of it--and maybe at the same time out of his own self-imposed isolation--and in a final twist would nail, and maybe even kill, the ****er.

Nothing like this happens in this movie; the house is just a house, the architect is just a guy, and his nemesis is of an unknown character, if he exists at all. Here is what does happen in the movie: Once the intruder is installed in the house--if he is--the architect begins hearing noises, but when he goes to investigate finds nothing. He calls the police, they think he's slightly nuts; he persuades his estranged wife to spend the night, she thinks he's more nuts. At last, more or less accidentally, he runs into the intruder (doesn't get a good look, but figures, who else could it be?--not a hard question, in a story with, to that point, fewer than three principal characters), whereupon he locks the doors, lowers the grills on the windows, throws away the key (I don't know why he thought this necessary), and leaves his victim to starve. I missed why this was a given: the doors and walls are made of steel? In any event, the architect takes to sleeping in his car. And since the idea of the movie has languished undeveloped and cannot now be developed further, something else must be devised to take its place. And this is it: The architect--are you ready?--moves into the house of the man who (presumably) moved into his, and lives there in the same way. How is this possible? It is not, but the movie takes this route to try and make it seem so: The architect has drawn a picture of the man who came to his door; and when he leaves the house he takes the picture with him; and while sitting in his car, he throws the picture into the street; and two kids pick it up and observe that it looks like Martin, their neighbor; whereupon the architect asks where his house is and the kids point the way.

If this sequence seems to verge on the implausible, what ensues plunges right in. The architect takes up residence with Martin's wheelchair-ridden wife, unbeknownst to her; so stealthy in his moves and so cunning in his reading of his hostess that he's able always to leave a room just as she enters or to duck out of sight just as she turns around. Throughout this section the movie is clever in one way, making (or leaving it to the viewer to make) the point that his life with this stranger, who doesn't know he's there, is in essence the same life he lived with his wife, as a virtual recluse with her as a convenient buffer. But at the same time, his inability to live in the world makes his transformation into Raffles the cat-burglar entirely incredible. Not to go into the series of twists at the end--including another murder achieved by locking someone in behind another invincible door--this one in front of a landing so flimsy that it collapses under the weight of a wheelchair; two nice people who take murder in stride; and (before the story started) the unnoticed construction of a tunnel under several houses.... To the final, long-anticipated twist, the movie adds another, to make it even more offensive, and then...ends.

Here is a story that depends on the development of two things--the idea of the stranger in the house, and the character of the man whose house it is--and fumbles both. The first fumble makes it boring; the second made me angry, as it pushed its main character farther and farther along a more and more zigzaggy path, and never offered any explanation for the character who most required one: Martin the tunnel-builder and sneak-tenant. The story should be redone by someone, some day.

Thrilling enthralling and very twisty

[Prof-Hieronymos-Grost · 9/10 · 29 January 2009]

Felix is an architect reeling from the recent split from his long time girlfriend. Now living alone he in a very large house, he pesters his former lover daily, to come home. One night his door bell rings, Felix jumps up to answer it, hoping its her, but it's a stranger wanting to use his phone, Felix is reluctant to let him use it, but eventually gives in. He leaves the man to have some privacy and goes to his kitchen, where he waits for him to finish, after a short time, Felix returns to the phone to see what's keeping the man…but he's not there. Felix calls out to him, but there is no answer, he checks the house thoroughly thinking the man may have been out to rob him, but again there is no sign of him. Felix locks up the house and retires to bed. He then starts to hear faint noises around the house, could the man be still in the house? Again he finds nothing, this continues for a couple of days until finally he thinks he has cornered the intruder, he calls the police who come immediately and again find nobody. Is there an intruder at all or is Felix going slightly crazy or is there some other reason? The Uninvited Guest touches on a theme that would scare the living daylights out of anybody, an intruder in your own home, the twist here is that its pure mental torture on Felix as he doesn't know for sure that there is someone. The success of a film like this is first of all down to its script and it's a good one, its very clever and delivers plenty of twists in an otherwise simple plot line. The film is actually turned on its head halfway through with one of those clever twists I already mentioned that adds immensely to the thrilling ride, this is one of those films that keeps giving right until the end, I haven't quite analysed all the twists to see if they make any sense, but that doesn't matter as this is a classy enthralling film, one I didn't want to end.

The Uncertain Genre

[leaningt · 7/10 · 9 January 2007]

A curiously haunting Spanish film, which, in terms of genre, refuses to be pigeon-holed. The story begins as a mysterious thriller when Felix allows a stranger into his home to use the telephone. Fear and paranoia set in when the visitor inexplicably disappears, leaving Felix to suspect that the man is still lurking within the house. The eerie noises from upstairs eventually become too much for the spooked Felix, and he seeks sanctuary in a neighbour's house. The narrative then unexpectedly changes direction and goes down an incomprehensible and voyeuristic road that confuses as well as questions one's morality. Guillem Morales' impressive, if ambiguous, debut feature film will, at least, prompt baffled viewers to press rewind, after the credits role, to make sense of a film that may be too clever for its own good.

Complete Rubbish

[Logan750 · 2/10 · 31 October 2013]

This will contain spoilers, so don't read on if you want to experience the full disappointment that this film delivers.

First of all, the idea is fantastic. It could have been a superb psychological thriller or an outstanding horror movie. Instead it turned out to be complete trash. The problems are as follows: 1. Every plot twist is predictable. His wife's undisclosed pregnancy, his shooting of the wife, his eventual discovery that something really was going on in his house, the fact that his neighbor wanted her husband dead so that she could be with his friend. All of that was telegraphed long before the reveal, which meant there were no surprises.

2. The ending doesn't follow. The premise is this: Man2 comes to Man1's house to use the phone, claiming the pay phone doesn't work outside. Man2 then disappears and Man1 thinks he is living in the house unseen. Man1 starts to lose his mind over this and eventually shoots his estranged wife when he mistakes her for Man2. (SIDE NOTE: Why could the wife talk at the end, but not when Man1 was firing bullets at her? No scream, nothing. It makes no sense) Man1 then goes in search of information about Man2 and finds his home. He takes up secret residence their with Man2's wife. She never knows Man1 is in the house. Eventually we learn about the basement and the fact that Man2 spent a lot of time down there. Finally, Man1 explores the basement and finds Man2 dead in a surprisingly well-constructed tunnel wide enough to drive a golf-cart through and lit with electricity.

There is no way to make any of this fit. First, it isn't clear if Man2 ever lived in Man1's house. If he did, why was the tunnel walled up perfectly? It could not have been the means by which Man2 came and went from Man1's house unseen because Man1 was in the basement frequently and the wall was clearly intact. Further, it appeared that Man2 was trying to break through the wall, which suggests he had never gotten through it before he died and thus could not have used it as an ingress.

At this point, you may think that Man2 was trying to get OUT after his wife locked in the basement so that she could carry on with the best friend. However, this also doesn't fit. It doesn't fit because no one trying to escape takes the time to build an elaborate tunnel, complete with brick archways and electricity. It also, in no way, ties together why Man2 ever went to Man1's house to place a phone call. If he were in danger, he could have just used the pay phone that he claimed was broken.

So, we have no reason for this tunnel AT ALL. The rest of the plot makes sense, but this ending totally destroys that. This could have been just a disappointment because it was so predictable. Instead, it was a disappointment for that reason and because the story used to get the ball rolling doesn't make any sense in the end. Ultimately, you get the "God in the Machine" feeling where the author just came up with some BS to try to tell one story and inadvertently told two stories and had no freaking clue how to conclude both.

Total junk. Don't watch it. Save yourself the 100 minutes.

P.S. If this review is disjointed, its because the utter insanity of this crap-fest is still swimming in my brain.

Unbalaced poetic horror

[thefadingcam · 6/10 · 12 September 2013]

The Uninvited Guest is Guillem Morales (Los Ojos de Julia) first full-length movie, a very good start. We are introduced to a suggestive horror through the concept of letting someone enter your house for a quick phone call just to see that person vanish while you go to the kitchen for a glass of water, not knowing if the person ever left the house. The movie kicks off with a good start, raising curiosity and interest on the viewer. However, as the time passes, even if the movie's development is indeed original, very narrative and well executed, the atmosphere changes, and all the focus and interest one had at the beginning almost fades away. Overall, this is competent thriller/horror movie that ends up feeling unbalanced, although intelligent. Visit thefadingcam blog for more!

Fantastic script, ruined movie

[cuentaabsurdaparafaceboo · 6/10 · 15 March 2017]

Fantastic original idea, probably a great script too. I hope some good film maker takes it and makes a good movie out of it some day in the future. This movie, as it is, has some fatal failures that make it an insult to the viewer's intelligence.

First of all, Having read all the reviews, I still don't understand why the same actress performs the roles of Claudia and Vera. Are we -the viewers- supposed to see that? IF not, hey, just a wig is not enough to fool us. If yes, are they supposed to be twins? then how comes Felix doesn't know that her longtime lover's twin sister lives right there, on the same street? No sense.

But the worst is yet to come. When Felix shoots 3 times at A MAN (Who is clearly taller than himself, and makes manly sounds)... But in the end we learn that it was in fact Claudia all the time! The thing is why didn't she tell him? Hey, it's me, your girlfriend! ... But no, instead she struggles to open the door but she won't say a single word, only growling and making man's noises. That is why he leaves the house convinced that he has killed a man, just the same as we viewers. So the final twist is so predictable, yet wrong. What a pity!

The Unexpected Film

[mart-45 · 10/10 · 18 November 2006]

Oh what a film - great story, great actors, great direction! Totally original, unpredictable and captivating, this movie proved to be the film experience of the month. Free of all kinds of clichés, it's a good example of a deep and disturbing old world thriller, which can be horrifying and funny at the same time. Perfectly written and grasping, it draws the viewer into a twisted world which could be surrounding each one us. Without stressing the paranoid aspect or attempting to brainwash the spectator, it manages to create a believably claustrophobic atmosphere and yet offer a very humane look upon loneliness and fear without introducing any evil characters or violent situations. I can't help but applaud the authors of this film and give it the full 10 points.

No sense

[yother · 6/10 · 5 September 2006]

May not contain spoiler but I don't want to take chances. This movie makes absolutely no sense as nearly as I can tell, and I would like someone to explain it to me. Characters come and go with no introduction and it's never clear what's going on. Of course, the protagonist never knows what's going on either, which may well be the whole point of this flick. It's all just a bit too minimalist for me, an old man with a sense of literary orderliness that comes from having read and studied writing from the 1930's and 1940's with the more rigidly stylized plot and character development characteristic of that era. But I like to branch out in ways of art and not close my mind to new ways of doing things. Still, the film makes no sense to me.

Chilling Thriller!

[kosmasp · 10/10 · 1 January 2007]

In Germany this movie is called, Uncertain Guest, but Uninvited Guest might be the more appropriate title. I watched this movie at the annual Fantasy Filmfest in the city Stuttgart. I didn't know what to expect, else then a thriller. After a slow beginning this movie gets in gear. And if you're with it for the ride, you'll get rewarded with a really great story/movie. There's only one thing you have to cope with, is that halfway through it'll change lanes ... The movie heads the same direction, but with a slightly different premise ... You'll understand once you watched it! ;o)

This change is necessary, because the movie would have become boring. The pace is going down a little during this change, but after that it accelerates again and will have you on your toes for the rest of the time. And it is the second part of the movie, that has one of the most chilling scenes (at least it had that affect to me, because it created images and thoughts in my head that weren't funny at all) I have seen in the last few years! But be warned, this movie might leave you with more questions than answers. It might, so if you're not afraid of that, try it out and have fun! :o)

Classic suspense

[mdnobles19 · 7/10 · 15 January 2013]

The Uninvited Guest starts off pretty damn slow, introducing us to Felix who is an architect that inhabits this majestic home in Barcelona, Spain. At the same time he is dealing with the breakup from his girlfriend, which starts to trigger some paranoia that he is being watched. When an unexpected knock on the door from a stranger, who needs to use the phone and then disappears, Felix soon realizes that there is more to his home than meets the eye.

This was a puzzling movie to watch and filled with suspense and atmosphere, with some creepy moments. The film definitely picks up the pace in its second half, which puts you on the edge of your seat. The film has this very classic look and feel to it that was refreshing and reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock film or the more recent thriller, Sleep Tight. The film builds to this shocking and baffling conclusion that hit it home for me. The film was clever and original! The acting was subtle and brilliant that had many layers, an intriguing watch. Andoni Gracia, who plays Felix, was captivating to watch and brought us along with his character through this spiraling maze of mystery, uncertainty and tension. At the same time you can't help to think if he was crazy all this time, because he had this creepiness about him. It's one of the few films that I don't mind trying to put the pieces together because I like the mystique of it all. Hell I might even watch it again to figure it all out.

Director, Guillem Morales has made two really good, classic thrillers. First The Uninvited Guest and then Julia's Eyes, he already films his movies like a classic suspenser, he is now one of my favorite directors. He knows how to create this suffocating atmosphere, builds the suspense with ease and hits you with a great twist towards the end. I can't wait for his next thriller; I hope it's soon! Overall, it's a shame that this little thriller that could is not more well known and appreciated. It has a quality about that you don't see much of in today's thrillers, it's not flashy, overly violent and focuses more on the little things that most directors miss. We need more of this in this genre! Recommended! 7 out of 10

Garbage in, garbage out

[quinnox-1 · 3/10 · 2 November 2011]

Absurd story where a man thinks there may be an intruder living in his house. An attempt is made for a surreal feel in the movie but it just winds up being dumb and dull. We are supposed to be interested in questions like - is the man imagining this scenario and maybe going crazy, or is there really an intruder? But it fails to be involving with cardboard characters and a slow pace where nothing really happens and the answer is who cares what is really going on. The asinine twist that takes place in the middle of the film causes it to truly go off the deep end.

It's not scary in any way, despite what the title may sound like, and not a thriller either. Hard to put this in a genre except to call it mediocre and a bad imitation of a David Lynch film. Everything seems forced with fake tension and unfunny attempts at comedy. I should have given this movie a wide berth.

Prettay, prettay, prettay, pretty good.

[ElijahCSkuggs · 8/10 · 19 July 2008]

No Curb Your Enthusiasm fans??

The Uninvited Guest turned out to be a welcome thriller, but not an entirely perfect encounter.

The film revolves around a dude who's having trouble coping with the departure of his wife/girlfriend.

While having these issues one day a man comes to the door and asks to use the phone. Our lead obliges and lets the man come in. When he goes back into the room to check on the invited guest, the room is empty and he can't understand how the man left without making a noise. It then registers that the man may still be in the house. This is when our lead begins hearing noises and his paranoid factor raises to great levels. Is he going mad? Is someone in the house? Should he prepare two plates at dinner time?

The Uninvited Guest, what a great name for a vampire flick. But in this case it's nothing related to the creatures of the night, but more on weirdos who enjoy secretly living in another person's house, which we see during the second half.

At one point, the movie kinda leaves the tension at the back door and goes in a different, more comedic type direction, but by the end of the movie, (darker vibe has returned) the viewer is left with a number of questions. Yet it seems like almost all the questions can be answered. Besides a couple.

I, for one, enjoy films that can bundle up the story and questions and explain it all in a eye-opening manner instead of the "think for yourself" and "no answer is wrong" type of ending. Though I do enjoy films like this, I do appreciate films wrapping up completely a tad more.

The Uninvited Guest is a pretty good flick that should appeal to movie-goers who enjoy these type of films where you're left thinking after the movie ends. If it wasn't for the drastic change of tone and the decision making during the middle, I would have really liked it.

Never mind about it's downfalls though, it's a well-made flick that should definitely have a wider audience.

*SPOILER* I think I know the answers to the confusing aspects of the plot

[matrix29 · 7/10 · 8 February 2007]

This movie is kind of like an adult version of "HOME ALONE" except there are no comedically-slapstick traps and it is a heck of a lot creepier. Think "The Lurking Burger King" mascot kind of creepy without the delivery of fast food upon locating the hidden lurker.

Felix (the man terrified of the hidden stranger in his house) breaks up with his girlfriend Claudia. A stranger stops over and asks to use the phone and then vanishes when Felix turns his back. After more jumping at shadows, calling the police with finding no stranger, and getting Vera (the twin of the wheelchair-bound Claudia) to stay the night after some lovemaking and a shared conversation about loneliness Felix wakes up to discover Vera missing. Later outside the closed kitchen door he hears Vera talking to some unknown person (the unknown person never audibly talks back) about "You can't hide in here forever Martin, he will discover you...", Felix bursts into the kitchen, scares Vera and she denies that she was talking to anyone. That leads to a breakup and Vera leaves again. Felix discovers his neighbor's dog outside his kitchen door later and he uses it to hunt for the mystery lurker in his home as the dog rushes upstairs. The elderly woman that owns the dog is scared of Felix because of the knife he is holding and she chases after her dog and ends up falling down the stairs and breaking her neck and dying. The police clear Felix of the death by declaring it accidental.

Felix goes home after stealing a gun out of the detective's desk drawer. Goes into his attic, sees a man-like shadow and shoots it. He follows the blood trail and locks the stranger in his basement. Felix then goes and locks the entire house down and oddly enough smashes his home alarm. He drives off, stops the car, takes his crumpled sketch of the vanished visitor and falls asleep in it and later wakes up hear 2 kids talking about whether the person in the sketch lives in a nearby house. Felix goes to that house and becomes a mysterious lurker in the home of the wheelchair-bound Claudia. It gets interesting after that.

Cutting to the chase... DO NOT READ THE REST IF YOU WANT TO ENJOY THE MOVIE... READ AFTER YOU HAVE SEEN THIS MOVIE TO DE-CONFUSE YOURSELF...

Felix is the star of the show and the victim of mysterious lurkers.

Claudia is the wheelchair-bound wife of Martin.

Vera is the twin sister of Claudia. She might also be a lurker as well given the ending and the fact that Martin could not leave the basement after Felix and Vera's breakup and Vera might just have gone to Felix's house secretly to locate Martin without upsetting Felix. Or she could just be a child of a family that were pros at the whole game of "Extreme Hide and Seek", though the easy obvious way to foil a hidden-home-lurker is to get a dog to seek the lurker out with the next most obvious way is to sprinkle powder on the floor to detect footprints (Kool-Aid would be hard to "redust" to hide footprints and a pain to clean up later).

Martin is the vanished phone user and mystery lurker who is found in the tunnel out of Claudia's basement at the end of the movie. He dies from a diabetic coma in the basement tunnel to Felix's house after Claudia locks the door to the basement, trapping Martin inside. Martin has to have been in Felix's house before Vera broke up with Felix. I assume Martin was lurking about Claudia's house too because he was a bit nutty before lurking around Felix's house to find out about where the tunnel exited. Since the tunnel from Claudia's basement wasn't open (plastered over bricks) from Felix's side of the house I have to logically assume that the second lurker was Vera trying to find Martin in Felix's house and she became a hidden lurker in Felix's house for the same weird motivation that Felix found in lurking hidden in Claudia and Bruno's house. Martin is the archaeologist husband of Claudia .

Bruno is most likely the brother of the wheelchair-bound Claudia and Vera. So this makes the family in the other house -- Felix + Claudia. Since Bruno isn't chatting about Vera all the time I can assume he isn't Vera's husband, so him being a brother makes the most sense.

I won't spoil the ending itself as if you have read to this point, you should no longer be confused what happened plot-wise now when you watch the movie. It is also logical to assume the tunnel between the homes might have been a way for the former home owners to escape danger or smuggle illicit items. The whole plot actually revolves around Martin's weird obsession of hiding from his wife all the time and then doing the same in a stranger's house. The only logical flaw I think for this movie is that Felix didn't go out a purchase a dog to locate the stranger in his home or just "bug bomb" the place. It would've been a pretty short running movie though if it were.

Interesting idea, not so good execution

[foxtografo · 6/10 · 12 September 2019]

It's quite intriguing at the beginning, but right away I noticed the performances weren't so good. I couldn't believe any of the characters. Some scenes look clumsy and silly, when they should be dramatic or violent. The general idea of someone living and hiding in your house it's creepy and could be interesting, but it's quite difficult to make it believable, and I didn't feel it worked here. The writing definitely need improving on this one. I think the mayor flaw is the direction, the house is not the best choice for the story, the actors feel amateurish and design in general wasn't great. The photography was interesting by moments, but most of the time is quite average. Still, I don't think it's a bad movie, and it's the kind that you have to think back what happened before and put together the pieces to understand the ending. To be honest I had to read a bit to get the ending, but it's all there, not much open to interpretation. Good movie, but could be much better.

A plot-hole hunter´s dream.

[axapvov · 7/10 · 31 January 2018]

What a surprise. At first, I couldn´t believe the positive reviews. Terrible acting, terrible dialogues, everything seemed to be going in all the wrong directions but every few minutes something happens. A plausible decision here, a surprising turn of events there, enough to forget about the amateurish feel.

Then the film suddenly changes thanks to one of the most ingenious twists I´ve ever seen. From that point on it´s very unpredictable and very entertaining. Details about the first half of the film become relevant and by the end of the film, it´s fun to discuss what happened exactly. I´d recommend to watch it with company.