‘The Uninvited’ Review: Elizabeth Reaser and Walton Goggins Spar in Nadia Conners’ Intriguing Debut | SXSW 2024

Dinner parties can be the worst, especially if the guests are insufferable. But even more miserable than having to endure a challenging group of people while faking a smile the whole time is not making it to the party at all. The Uninvited boasts a title that could easily have multiple meanings, as an out-of-work actress prepares for her agent husband’s latest lavish gathering, thanklessly contributing so much of herself for a night that isn’t meant to be about her and certainly won’t bolster her professional future. Nadia Conners’ feature debut offers an incisive critique of both Hollywood and society when it comes to the role of women.

Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) speaks the film’s first words out loud to herself, expressing that she’s starting to understand the value of plastic surgery since she didn’t expect to age (at all), She gets told that her latest job prospect won’t be coming to fruition because she was “too old to believably play the mother of a six-year-old and it felt tragic.” The twisted irony is that she does have a child, Wilder, that young, and unlike her husband Sammy (Walton Goggins, who is married to Conners), who passes on dad time by claiming he’s already on a phone call he’s waiting to receive, she puts Wilder first rather than worrying about her needs. 

The setting for The Uninvited is a lavish home in the Hollywood Hills, surely quite expensive but very dated in appearance. Doorknobs come right off when pulled on, and its layout isn’t one that seems to value privacy, with easy access to the bathroom connected to Wilder’s bathroom where guests are able to enter and do coke. It’s also, apparently, the onetime home of Helen (Lois Smith), who arrives in her Prius trying to get her gate clicker to work and unmoved by Rose and Sammy’s insistence that she must be confused. Helen’s semi-lucid comments on how the house has changed add an element of perplexing nostalgia to her already disoriented state.

Conners, who excitedly announced before the film’s SXSW premiere that she had finally been able to make her first film at age fifty-four, noted that the film was originally conceived as a play. That remains noticeable in the finished product, which includes dialogue that might resonate better in a starker stage confrontation, like when Sammy tells Rose that he feels a lot of things, she just doesn’t want to hear about any of them. Much of the drama takes place on couches where characters exchange barbs and Helen speaks in riddles, prompting Rose to confront the opportunities she’s given up in service of being a wife and parent and forcing Sammy to realize that maybe he’s more of an asshole than he thinks.

Helen’s presence, however productive it is in setting up insightful dialogue and revealing situations, doesn’t entirely make sense, and getting past that as a viewer is a hurdle. When she first comes in to use the bathroom, Rose looks through her purse and calls a few numbers in her notebook. But she never asks Helen what her address is or when she thinks she lived there, or for her to call someone to come get her. It’s as if Rose is so drawn to the allure of something interesting and unexpected happening in her life that doesn’t involve her husband’s work that she takes only minimal steps to actually do what might most quickly help this woman. Or, likelier, it’s just a plot device whose story service outweighs its illogical nature.

It’s nice to see Reaser in a leading film role, and she feels natural and genuine as Rose, who Sammy remarks is capable of just switching on her charm and wowing everyone when she finally gets to come outside and join the party. Goggins, best known for TV work in The Shield and Justified, is playing a different part than he usually does, not a well-read, lawless Southerner but instead a well-dressed, soul-sucking yes man who clearly wants to be accepted by the elite company in which he presently finds himself. It’s not the most expected fit for Goggins, who handles the challenge decently and excels most at presenting Sammy’s failing confidence and the vulnerability he seeks so desperately to mask.

Though audiences don’t get to spend much time at the party, it’s worth meeting a few of the guests, namely Rufus Sewell as an impossibly self-involved actor who likens himself to a high priest before declaring himself God and Eva De Dominici as a young actress with more depth and compassion than her outward appearance and demeanor indicates. The omnipresent Pedro Pascal expands his character Rolodex as an old flame of Rose’s swimming in contradictions, like that he’s sober but still drinks occasionally. That trait can be applied broadly to the film: it’s all very intriguing, but some of the substance doesn’t feel entirely sound. Conners shows promise as a filmmaker, wrapping important messages about family, professionalism, and what it means to be happy in a shell that isn’t devoid of cracks.

Grade: B

This review is from the 2024 SXSW Film Festival. It is currently without U.S. distribution.