Skip to main content

The Invitation (2015)

You know the drill - there's ALWAYS spoilers. Don't want the movie ruined for you? Come back after you've seen it.

And - I'm still without an editor - typos and bad grammar await you! Enjoy!

The Invitation is about an LA dinner party gone terribly wrong. Six couples pile into an extravagant house tucked away in the LA hills – as the night progresses suspicion, fake smiles, and traumatic memories turn their conversation from friendly to incredibly tense. Through flashbacks and terse snippets of character interaction we discover the ties binding each character to the others; one couple (Will and Eden) lost a child and some of the group have joined a self-help group that sounds like a cult. Hidden sexual desires are exposed and everyone is made to feel uncomfortable. In the end, folks become murderous and we realize that no amount of red velvet cake can make up for the loss of a child or combat years of brainwashing. 

The Invitation falls within the sub-genre of... killer parties? (Parties from hell? Parties you're happy to have missed?) alongside some other films like:

The Perfect Host wherein an escaped convict is taken into a man's home and while you initially believe the convict will kill his host, the host turns out to be a serial killer.

Clue, which brings together a misfit bunch of blackmailees who turn to murder to end the blackmail. 

House on Haunted Hill (1959) - and (I suppose) the remake as well - sees seemingly random folks invited to a mysterious party that ends in back-stabbing, double-crossing, and murder. 

The Last Supper (1995) brings to the table liberals and conservatives - with the former poisoning the latter by the end of the meal. 

Although definitely able to build some tension and cast some confusion, The Invitation wasn't able to actually create enough genuine doubt as to how the movie would end and who would be leading the killing. Maybe I've seen too many movies or maybe I'm just prone to believing that any "self-help group" is really a murderous cult - but there was never a moment during this movie that I thought: "Maybe Will is just having a psychotic break and imagining some sort of conspiracy here."

The obvious lesson here? Don't drink the Koolaid (or wine, in this case) at a dinner party hosted by creepy cult members.

Overall, not a terrible movie BUT definitely not one I need to watch a second time. While I'm certainly no fan of Jennifer's Body, I'm actually surprised that director Karyn Kusam is also behind The Invitation - it feels like a step backwards for her.

Sorry folks, not much more to offer on this one tonight.

Watch the trailer for The Invitation here:

And you can grab a copy of The Invitation for yourself here:
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Witch (2015)

You know the drill - there's ALWAYS spoilers. Don't want the movie ruined for you, come back after you've seen it. Also - I'm still without an editor - typos and bad grammar await you! I keep hoping that the cultural obsession with zombies will end; literally every other damn movie that comes 'round seems to feature some sort of shambling, undead being bent on devouring the weak flesh of regular humans. Once upon a time, zombies have have been used as a metaphor for the blind consumerism created by our capitalist society, or the perceived depletion of resources by immigrants, or even the ravages of time and disease on our frail bodies. Now it seems that the deeper social commentary has been lost as audiences mindlessly consume "zombie fiction" in an attempt to keep up with trends. ( How very meta - a film buddy of mine commented on this assessment! ) All of this is just a sideways rant, leading up to my actual point: it seems that zombie may actually...
1 comment
Read more

Mother!

Alright friends and readers–this one is probably doubly filled with typos and grammar errors because I wrote it while angry. Good luck and happy reading. There are unpopular opinions in every realm. As a film student, you can truly strike a nerve when you say things like, "I fucking hate the self-indulgence of independent films and the way people idolize them." Or, you know, "Low lighting and slow pacing does not a good movie make." Or whatever. You can of course, objectively, understand how this happens. When you are creating art–when you are outside the system  so to speak–you are free to explore things (subjects, techniques, etc.) that may need to be addressed and that freedom can become intoxicating and go to one's head. While it may seem only right  or only fair  to respect and accept each creative endeavor that every artist undertakes, it is unreasonable to believe that the world will remain forever patient with the self-obsession artists have. Th...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Babadook

Spoilers and typos! Enjoy. We often look back nostalgically on childhood, envious of the joy we felt and the boundless imaginations we possessed. How conveniently we forget the other side of that coin: as children, we experience a depth of terror our adult selves continually try to recreate for cathartic entertainment. When we try to bring those childhood fears to life on the screen, we often end up with movies about "things that go bump in the night," which is a somewhat superficial approach. While it does provide an opportunity for a supernatural experience, it ignores the root of our fear: the unknown . As children, we lack life experience. We lack nuance. We lack understanding. Not knowing creates in us fear. Yes, we fear what lurks in the darkness but we also fear the adult world because we do not understand how it works. The Babadook works to exploit both  those fears. The short story: a widowed mother of a young boy experiences a mental breakdown and tries to...
Post a Comment
Read more