One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Crappy film

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The Unseen is directed by Lewis Allen and collectively written by Hagar Wilde, Ken Englund and Raymond Chandler. It's adapted from Ethel Lina White's novel "Her Heart in Her Throat". It stars Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert Marshall, Phyllis Brooks and Isobel Elsom. Music is by Ernst Toch and cinematography by John F. Seitz.Elizabeth Howard (Russell) is hired as a governess for David Fielding's (McCrea) two children. With David being secretive and strange occurrences happening, she begins to unravel the mystery of the empty house next door.Foolishly seen as a follow up to the far superior The Uninvited (1944), The Unseen is efficient without really rising to thrilling heights. Taken as a mood piece it scores favourably, lots of shadows, cobbled streets, darkened rooms and plenty of suspicious goings on, but as a mystery it falls flat. It gets off to a mixed start, with a grisly murder bogged down by a clumsy narration, from there we are on board with Russell's governess who gets more than she bargained for in her new employment. A number of characters drift in and out of proceedings, but the villain of the piece is evident from the get go, and it builds to a disappointingly flat finale.A sort of weak companion piece to Gaslight (original and remake) and The Innocents, it's not recommended with any great confidence. Those looking for better and similar tonal fare from Lewis Allen are advised to seek out the aforementioned The Uninvited and So Evil My Love (1948). 5/10

Starting off on all the right notes, this mediocre reunion of director Lewis Allen and leading lady Gail Russell from "The Uninvited" is a frustrating misfire. Russell is hired by brooding widower Joel McCrea to look after his two rather bizarre children. There's a boarded up house next door where a nasty old man lived years before, leading to a bunch of strange goings on and ending up in murder. The film just gets odder as it goes on, bringing in a whole bunch of seemingly suspicious characters, causing nothing but more confusion. This is the type of script that seems pike a bunch of words on paper and no cohesive plot to tie everything together. Some of the characters have no real reason for being there in the first place, wasting such talented character players as Herbert Marshall, Elisabeth Risdon and Isobel Elsom, who should have been more involved in the structure of the plot, being the widow of the man who owned the abandoned house next door. What becomes clear right off is that the only thing that is unseen is a plot line, making this one of the true misfires of Hollywood in the 1940's, and perhaps the worst film of 1945.

Although The Unseen received an Oscar nomination for Best Sound it is a major disappointment as it was sold by Paramount as a followup to their hit from the year before, The Uninvited. Even the presence of Gail Russell who got her breakthrough role in the previous film, in The Unseen that guaranteed nothing.I also have to say that my copy of this film in fact had bad sound in it and I attribute that to the manufacturer of this bootleg. It was shocking to read here that The Unseen got an Oscar nomination in of all categories, sound.Joel McCrea has moved back to the family estate with his two children, both of whom have some issues. Especially son Richard Lyon who seems to have a lot more money than his allowance would warrant. The house next door is boarded up since a murder took place a decade earlier. Gail is hired by a strangely brooding McCrea who is going into territory inhabited by Orson Welles as Mr. Rochester or Laurence Olivier as Maxim DeWinter. It's unlike anything McCrea ever did before or since. Gail is to be governess to the kids. But she's drawn into all the mystery, especially after a couple of other murders occur in and around that boarded up house.Such players as Herbert Marshall, Tom Tully, Isobel Elsom, and Elizabeth Risdon add to the creepiness of the film.But I can't speak for all who will see it, but I was terribly let down in the ending. No other worldly beings doing deviltry to humans, just some very ordinary humans for very ordinary human motives are responsible for all the dirty work.Joel McCrea decided to concentrate on westerns after this and he did the rest of his career with one exception. It probably was a wise decision.

Despite having a bunch of notable credits (novelist Ethel Lina White, screenwriters Raymond Chandler and Hagar Wilde, associate producer John Houseman, actors Joel McCrea, Herbert Marshall, Norman Lloyd and Tom Tully) and an excellent prototype in one of Hollywood's finest ghost stories, THE UNINVITED (1944) – not to mention reuniting director Lewis Allen and tragic star Gail Russell from that same film – it is no surprise to me now that THE UNSEEN has remained unseen {sic} for so long. In fact, I only managed to score a hazy-looking, VHS-sourced copy of it which does the film's only true trump card – the atmospheric lighting – no favors at all. At any rate, despite being hurriedly put into production following the success of that earlier Ray Milland classic, there are no ghosts to be seen or heard anywhere this time around; instead we have a surprisingly unsatisfying combination of "The Turn Of The Screw" (typified by the obnoxious antics of McCrea's elder son to scare newly-installed governess Russell away) and GASLIGHT (1944; by way of the mysterious comings-and-goings in the supposedly abandoned house next door). Marshall is the outwardly benign family doctor who openly despises prospective property purchaser Lloyd, Phyliis Brooks is the dishy former governess who still exercises a strange hold over McCrea's boy and, as a mere red herring, Isobel Elsom is the inquisitive sister of the suspiciously-deceased inhabitant of the house next door!! Apart from the fact that, for the most part, there are no scares or even thrills to be had here, the film also commits the cardinal sin of making its male lead (a hot-tempered Joel McCrea!) unsympathetic for the duration but, then, have him predictably fall for the doe-eyed governess at the very end.