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.

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.

In an older London neighborhood beset with strange deaths and a spooky, abandoned house with boarded-up windows, Gail Russell arrives via Boston to accept job as governess to widower Joel McCrea's two precocious kids; quickly, she begins to realize McCrea's little boy is in-cahoots with the previous nanny and may be covering up a dangerous plot which ties in with the old house--and also with McCrea, whose mysterious comings and goings spell trouble. Over-plotted and yet ultimately slim-seeming co-feature from Paramount, stiffly directed and not very exciting. Heavy-lidded Russell, fresh off her triumph in "The Univited", was never an exceptional actress, but here she gives hint she may have become a very good one, and her terse exchanges with McCrea show a much more confident performer than in "The Univited". The screenplay, adapted from Ethel Lina White's novel "Her Heart in Her Throat", falls rather early into a disparaging rut, what with Russell continually reporting peculiar happenings to people who don't believe or listen to her, and that final clinch nearly comes out of nowhere. However, for fans of 1940s potboilers like the not-dissimilar "Gaslight", this provides minor enjoyment. ** from ****

Very interesting mystery with Joel Mcrea as a man you just can't understand.Gail Russell gives a great performance as the governess of Mcrea's children and Herbert Marshall is the "friendly" doctor you would never suspect.