An uninvited analysis: The horror of interpretation in The Guard Brothers’ The Uninvited (2009)

This article provides a close reading of the Charles and Thomas Guard film, The Uninvited (2009), exploring the ways in which it traces Freudian psychoanalysis in general, and the Oedipal narrative in particular. Emphasizing the indeterminacy of both Oedipus and The Univited alike, the article discusses the temporal disorientation opened by the very process of interpretative analysis. The argument concludes with an account of how the film, in order to expose the way in which Freudian psychoanalysis provokes rather than remedies nightmarish haunting, makes use of false memories and convoluted references to effect what is called jamais vu, a mode of foreshadowing which generally reveals that which has been concealed.