☆☆☆☆
You won't see the end of The Invitation coming, but the beauty of the film is that within its tight narrative confines, the final few shots make perfect sense. And when you think back on how the film begins, and all of the odd and puzzling moments it contains, the movie delivers a rare sort of satisfaction.
It opens with a slightly clunky and hipster-low-budget kind of feel, and its opening scene tries a little too hard to build both foreboding and foreshadowing as grungy-handsome Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) drive to a dinner party that's being held in the expensive, mid-century-chic home of his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her husband David (Michiel Huisman).
Will hasn't been in the house since he and Eden divorced following the accidental death of their son, a loss he is still grieving. The dinner party seems intended to wash away that sadness. Eden has invited a handful of their oldest friends to the party -- and if that setup sounds a little like an Agatha Christie mystery, it is.
Nothing at all seems right about this party, especially not the hosts. Her guests are all dressed casually, as befits a group of longtime friends, but Eden appears wearing a flowing white gown, and her plump-lipped smile seems to be hiding some unsettled emotions. David, meanwhile, keeps trying to lock the doors, and thinks the best way to break the ice with everyone is to show them some deeply disturbing videos.
Plus, there are those decorative security bars all over the windows.
Yet Will seems to be the only person who thinks there's something amiss. Is it just his mind working overtime? He and Eden are the only ones for whom the house is haunted by its tragic past; perhaps he's just dealing with some difficult emotions.
But then there's the matter of the two strangers who show up at the party, an anxiety-inducing raw nerve named Sadie (Lindsay Burge) and the burly, quiet Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch -- watch him loom in his early scenes), who clearly don't belong.
The Invitation is marketed as a horror-thriller because there's really no easy category for it, but at its warped and twisty heart is a mystery -- what, exactly, is going on? It's the most effective sort of mystery, too, because it has an answer, though you'll be excused if you find that the answer just begs more questions, some of which I expect would be answered upon viewing it a second or third time. If it were a novel, you'd finish the last page and immediately start thumbing through the early chapters and smack your head for not noticing the clues.
For some, I imagine The Invitation will feel a little too slow and measured, a bit overly relaxed about its pacing. But as its characters -- some of which, like the gay couple, are simple tropes, while others hint at more complexity -- are effective at building a sense of off-kilter dread. Blanchard is a standout as the emotionally wounded Eden, who seems to have a newfound calm, though one of a chilling sort.
Tightly wound, carefully constructed upon a foundation that turns out to go deeper and be more solid than it might appear, The Invitation shares a fiendish kind of forethought with Jordan Peele's Get Out, and director Karyn Kusama is willing to take her time getting where she's going. It all leads up to those final few shots, which are about as fulfilling and as intriguing as they come.
A shaky start leads to a brilliant finish, and this turns out to be an Invitation you don't want to decline.
Viewed April 1, 2017 -- Netflix
It opens with a slightly clunky and hipster-low-budget kind of feel, and its opening scene tries a little too hard to build both foreboding and foreshadowing as grungy-handsome Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) drive to a dinner party that's being held in the expensive, mid-century-chic home of his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her husband David (Michiel Huisman).
Will hasn't been in the house since he and Eden divorced following the accidental death of their son, a loss he is still grieving. The dinner party seems intended to wash away that sadness. Eden has invited a handful of their oldest friends to the party -- and if that setup sounds a little like an Agatha Christie mystery, it is.
Nothing at all seems right about this party, especially not the hosts. Her guests are all dressed casually, as befits a group of longtime friends, but Eden appears wearing a flowing white gown, and her plump-lipped smile seems to be hiding some unsettled emotions. David, meanwhile, keeps trying to lock the doors, and thinks the best way to break the ice with everyone is to show them some deeply disturbing videos.
Plus, there are those decorative security bars all over the windows.
Yet Will seems to be the only person who thinks there's something amiss. Is it just his mind working overtime? He and Eden are the only ones for whom the house is haunted by its tragic past; perhaps he's just dealing with some difficult emotions.
But then there's the matter of the two strangers who show up at the party, an anxiety-inducing raw nerve named Sadie (Lindsay Burge) and the burly, quiet Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch -- watch him loom in his early scenes), who clearly don't belong.
The Invitation is marketed as a horror-thriller because there's really no easy category for it, but at its warped and twisty heart is a mystery -- what, exactly, is going on? It's the most effective sort of mystery, too, because it has an answer, though you'll be excused if you find that the answer just begs more questions, some of which I expect would be answered upon viewing it a second or third time. If it were a novel, you'd finish the last page and immediately start thumbing through the early chapters and smack your head for not noticing the clues.
For some, I imagine The Invitation will feel a little too slow and measured, a bit overly relaxed about its pacing. But as its characters -- some of which, like the gay couple, are simple tropes, while others hint at more complexity -- are effective at building a sense of off-kilter dread. Blanchard is a standout as the emotionally wounded Eden, who seems to have a newfound calm, though one of a chilling sort.
Tightly wound, carefully constructed upon a foundation that turns out to go deeper and be more solid than it might appear, The Invitation shares a fiendish kind of forethought with Jordan Peele's Get Out, and director Karyn Kusama is willing to take her time getting where she's going. It all leads up to those final few shots, which are about as fulfilling and as intriguing as they come.
A shaky start leads to a brilliant finish, and this turns out to be an Invitation you don't want to decline.
Viewed April 1, 2017 -- Netflix
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