Patrick Mulcahy on “off topic” US films
Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of American films that don’t even remotely reflect what is happening in the USA at present. Novocaine,in which an assistant bank manager who can’t feel pain but can empathise becomes a reluctant action hero and Death of a Unicorn, in which a corporate lawyer hoping to ingratiate himself with his boss at a nature retreat runs over a mythical unicorn and has to answer to the unicorn’s parents, seem spectacularly off topic. It is not just their “why concept” premise. The protagonists in both films are middle-income professionals in a country seeking to deprive the most vulnerable of their income, their home, even their nationality. It is no surprise that the most successful films of the past six months – Wicked and currently A Minecraft Movie – are set in fantasy locations.
It isn’t just studio films that have failed to take the temperature of a country undergoing state capture. Lower-budget independent films seem blisteringly off-topic, as if their creators have absorbed themselves in the minutiae of small problems, blissfully ignoring big ones. The same logic that determines that a trans woman is a woman because an identity has been claimed has been weaponized against those who seek social equality. Men have claimed victim status and are striking back, privileging outright lies over truth, flouting the law and shattering social contracts. Not just any men, the richest 1%, exploiting hatred and mistrust as the Brexit campaign in the UK had done so successfully before it.
The Uninvited, a Los Angeles set drama with comic overtones but no actual laughs, is an example of “off topic” entertainment. Earnest, well-acted, but made irrelevant not just by Trumpism but by the forest fires that devastated the Los Angeles metropolitan area in January 2025, writer-director Nadia Conners” film stars Elizabeth Reaser as Rose, an unemployed actress turned life coach, who is hosting a party on behalf of her talent agent husband, Sammy (Walton Goggins). Rose, a mother with a six-year-old son, has just lost the role of a mother of a six-year-old son to a younger actress, and hasn’t had a part in a while. She is surprised by an older woman, Helen (Lois Smith), who appears at the bottom of her driveway, convinced that she has arrived home. Rose tries to do the decent thing to ensure that this unexpected guest, who clearly has Alzheimer’s, is taken care of. However, Sammy just wants the party to be a success, having a secret of his own, and an ulterior motive.
The impressive cast is rounded out by Pedro Pascal as Lucian, an actor who is a former alcoholic as well as Rose’s ex-lover, and Rufus Sewell as the ubiquitous British client, who takes drugs, is accompanied by a younger woman (Eva Di Dominici) and embodies every cliché about Brits in Hollywood that you’ve ever read about.
There is something pleasingly do-it-yourself about the film. Why not invite a group of actors to your own home and shoot it there? No worries about permits, except for the lighting of the night-time exterior scenes – you might keep your neighbours awake. The call sheet is broadly straightforward. You don’t even have to worry about the location of the wrap party. Much of the drama resembles a filmed play, albeit one in which Helen locks herself in the bathroom. There is never any question that Rose’s marriage will disintegrate, although there is an implied financial challenge on the horizon.
Watching this from a 2025 perspective, we might think, of course their money problems will be sorted out by an insurance claim. The core of the film is about the effect of Alzheimer’s, forcing an individual to live in random memories untied to any relevant reality, though every memory has a trigger. Conners carefully articulates Helen’s confusion so that the audience knows when she is living in the moment and when she is lost in the past. We understand that she used to reside at the house with her husband and, like Rose, was an actress. Helen alternates between joining in with the party and succumbing to and causing panic. Her plight doesn’t so much comment on the party as run parallel to it.
At the centre of the film is Rose, played by an actress with whom most audiences would be unfamiliar. It is as if Conners offered Reaser a part to state her case, that women in their late thirties and early forties can be empathetic in a leading role. Reaser doesn’t have any star-making moments – the film is too frivolous to make its point. However, she gives what drama there is some authenticity.
In UK cinemas dominated by studio fodder, The Uninvited is getting a limited release. It is modestly entertaining but already seems like a period piece from a more optimistic age.
“The Uninvited” opened in UK cinemas on Friday 9 May 2025