The Big Picture

The horror genre often falls short with remakes, like
The Uninvited
, unable to match the mastery of original films.

A Tale of Two Sisters
showcases eerie dynamics and terrifying moments that cannot be replicated or overlooked.
This Korean horror classic is a masterclass in unsettling audiences and remains a trailblazer in the genre today.

If there’s one thing the horror genre is really good at, it’s making remakes that don’t live up to the original. There are so many that it’s become a running joke across the medium; sure, every now and then there’s an amazing, innovative remake like 2013’s Evil Dead, but usually, these rehashings of classic plots only serve as weak copies that can’t compete with the original. Few are as infamous as the dreaded American remake of a foreign film, copies of legendary movies that reduce the original movie’s plot to a much simpler copy, with one of this category’s biggest offenders being The Uninvited.

Directed by The Guard Brothers, this film about two sisters trying to uncover the secrets of their evil stepmother was met with a resounding indifference when it premiered in 2009. A decent finale twist keeps it alive in modern conversations, but even this intriguing climax can’t shed its reputation as a largely unremarkable film, which is extremely unfortunate — for the original movie it’s based on. Because, while The Uninvited is critiqued for its predictable plot and scares, its predecessor is lauded as a classic, a showcase of everything amazing about Korean horror cinema that unnerves anyone who watches it. Unfortunately, The Uninvited couldn’t meet these lofty heights (few movies could) but audiences should not let that film’s banality stop them from watching the absolute masterpiece that is Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters.

A Tale of Two Sisters After being institutionalized in a mental hospital, Su-mi reunites with her sister, Su-yeon, and they return to live at their country home. But strange events plague the house, leading to surprising revelations and a shocking conclusion.Director Jee-woon Kim Cast Kap-su Kim , Jung-ah Yum , Su-jeong Lim , Geun-Young Moon , Woo Ki-Hong , Dae-yeon Lee Writers Jee-woon Kim Tagline Our sorrow was conceived long before our birth Release Date June 13, 2003 Runtime 110 Expand

‘The Uninvited’ Couldn’t Keep Up With ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’
Despite its best efforts, The Uninvited swapped out A Tale of Two Sisters’ unnerving dreariness with a predictable plot that never reaches the greatness of the movie it’s trying to replicate. The film focuses on Anna (Emily Browning), a teenage girl recently discharged from a psychiatric facility after the tragic death of her terminally ill mother. She’s eager to reunite with her sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), though, to the sisters’ disgust, they’re forced to share their home with their father’s new girlfriend, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks) — who just so happens to be their mother’s former nurse. The pair believe she may have had something to do with their mom’s death, leading into a plot that, while pretty typical for the genre, has some bright spots; this is a truly all-star cast, plus the final reveal that Alex is dead, imagined up by a grief-stricken (and murderous) Anna, is handled decently. Despite these, the film fails to move past its superficial storytelling, as even in a story whose climax reveals the terrifying depths of our protagonist’s mind it never really tries to delve deeper into the characters presented. It pins its entire plot on a big end reveal which, while interesting, is unearned after a runtime refusing to dig into the themes at play.

Related This Actor Is the Master of English-Language Horror Remakes She’s not just a scream queen, she’s a scream legend.

While The Uninvited doesn’t interrogate its themes of grief and guilt, that’s where A Tale of Two Sisters thrives. The film follows a similar plot: Su-mi (Im Soo-jung) is a teenage girl recently released from a mental institution, reeling from the death of her mother and desperate to return to her younger sister, Su-yeon (Moon Geun-young). Their reunion is soured by their father’s new wife (and their formerly ill mother’s nurse), Eun-joo (Yum Jung-ah), with the sisters suspecting this wretched woman may have had more to do with their mother’s death than anyone could have thought. The Uninvited copied this plot’s main aspects; even with some small changes, they share the same basic structure and concept. But it’s how A Tale of Two Sisters twists the premise that makes it truly terrifying, granting viewers insight into this complex situation and revealing the terrible lengths someone will go to in order to protect their home — or ignore their biggest mistake. It offers a petrifying, confusing scene of familial conflict, one that’s impossible to look away from as viewers question everything they’re watching onscreen.

‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ Makes The Quiet Terrifying
Image via Cineclick Asia Big Blue Film
 

A Tale of Two Sisters is a grand showcase of eerily unhealthy dynamics, not only in how desperately Su-mi clings to her sister and the memory of her mother, but also in Eun-joo’s relationships with this family she worked hard marrying into. While The Uninvited reduced the stepmother character to a simple villain, the original film grants this character complexity; while still shown (at least through Su-mi’s eyes) to be overtly malicious, Eun-joo struggles with an unhappy marriage and hateful stepdaughters in a way that doesn’t excuse her actions, but rather adds a nuance that makes them more unbearable to watch. It’s a depth that she shares with the sisters themselves, as the movie investigates their toxic co-dependency to explain the many interpersonal blowups (that become more and more alarming as the film goes on) and create an unpleasant tension that fills each scene. It makes for an unnerving drama that only worsens with its unsettling horror.

A Tale of Two Sisters is slow in the best way, using a constantly buzzing sound design to keep audiences uncomfortable and subject them to numerous scenes of horror patiently approaching its stricken victims. This unique style of fear is exemplified in the scary moments that made this film a legend; whether it be Su-mi watching from her bed as a ghostly woman silently approaches her, taking her time to corner the young girl who can do nothing but stare in terror, or Eun-joo being played with in the kitchen by a terrifying specter of a little girl (who looks oddly familiar), the movie’s moments of evenly-paced fear are some of the best in the genre. What’s even better (or, in a way, so much worse) is howit carries that unnerving sense of impending doom throughout, using this anxious energy in both scary moments and basic human conversations to hint at the malice living within each of these people’s — especially Su-mi’s — minds. This climaxes into a shocking number of plot twists that seamlessly blend into a deeply disturbing finale, exemplifying not only the movie’s exceptional ability to frighten but also to take so many different plot elements and somehow turn them into a strangely cathartic, utterly devastating climax.

‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ Has Roots in Korean Folklore
Image via Cineclick Asia Big Blue Film

One reason there is such a glaring thematic difference between A Tale of Two Sisters and its American counterpart is the rich history of lore that the Korean film draws from. The use of sisters combating an evil stepmother figure may have brought Cinderella to mind for a Western audience, and they are not too far from the mark. The Korean folktale “Janghwa Hongryeon jeon” has many basic elements in common Kim Jee-won’s film, as it features two embattled sisters living under the influence of a malicious stepmother.

The crux of the folktale lies with the stepmother not wishing to use family money to pay for the wedding of the eldest girl, so she makes up a rumor about her stepdaughter being unchaste and fakes a scene to suggest that the young woman had suffered a miscarriage. She then has one of her sons murder the young woman, whose younger sister also mysteriously dies in the same pond her sister was found in. The spirits of the two sisters then haunt the village, and every new mayor who comes to rule dies the day after he arrives — until a new young man comes to town and decides to investigate.

The young mayor finds out from the spirits of the sisters what transpired and reveals the stepmother’s insidious actions to the village and her husband, the girls’ father. The stepmother and her son are sentenced to death, while the father, who is an unknowing victim, goes on to remarry. He is then visited by the spirits of his daughters, who want to return to him. After this vision, his new wife becomes pregnant and delivers twin baby girls, which he names after his first daughters, Janghwa and Hongryeon.

The folktale has been adapted to film many times in Korea. The earliest known adaptation was a 1924 film that shares its title with the story, and the folktale has been reimagined in film several times since. The thematic depth of dealing with issues of haunting memories, hatred, and guilt, and the consequences of acting on these emotions, provide a rich tapestry for filmmakers to draw from. Director and co-writer of A Tale of Two Sisters, Kim Jee-won, told Fangoria that “the thing about bad memories is that, when you want to forget about them, they will come up and torture you. They have that power.” And in his haunting horror classic, the slow pace allows this torture to build to an intense pitch before the climax is revealed.

‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ Can Never Be Replicated – And That’s Good

Some horror movies are so amazing that no remake could ever do them justice, and while A Tale of Two Sisters is clearly one of those, The Uninvited deserves respect for trying. And it didn’t fail completely; while it couldn’t deliver on the original’s lingering dread, it did have a decent ending plot twist and some genuinely creepy scenes. It deserves some appreciation for attempting a remake in the first place — especially because any team of creators trying to replicate this astounding story would fail just as much (if not more). Because A Tale of Two Sisters is unique in every sense of the word, creating a legitimately unpredictable story and a film style that imbues everyone watching with a visceral sense of terrified anxiety. It is a masterclass in unnerving audiences, establishing numerous innovative techniques that are copied in Korean and American cinema to this day. It is a terrifying, discomforting trailblazer that deserves widespread acclaim.

A Tale of Two Sisters is Available to Watch on AMC+ in the U.S.

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