The Invitation (2015)

Director: Karyn Kusama
Writer(s): Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi
Starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Michiel Huisman, and Tammy Blanchard

I stumbled on information for The Invitation at some point last year and had been waiting for it ever since; some early hype, coupled with an eerie, simple premise, is what sucked me in, but then I kind of forgot all about it in the intervening months.  Once I saw that it had come to VOD (video on-demand) services, I eagerly tracked it down.  Would I get that rare movie that lived up to its hype, or as the odds seem to favor, at least as far as I’m concerned, an overrated pile of garbage?  The answer with this one lies somewhere in the middle.

I have to begin this review with a rather bizarre disclaimer: I recently started taking Adderall for ADD.  I also happened to ingest some caffeine a couple of hours before sitting down to this viewing.  Me being sensitive to caffeine, and still getting used to the medicine made me a nervous, paranoid mess.  So am I confessing that I wasn’t in the right state of mind when watching The Invitation, thus nullifying the review?  That would depend on your interpretation, because the movie actually benefited from my fragile state-of-mind; as my wife (who, also as a disclaimer, is pregnant and hormonally imbalanced) railed against every stupid plot contrivance, or poorly-scripted moment, I was actually glued to the edge of my seat, wondering how it would all play out. And grip me this slow-burn horror film did, ironically up until the ending, when stuff actually starts happening; it is also at that point that this more-or-less becomes a formulaic “who will live and who will die” game that just isn’t very fun to play.

Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) are on their way to the house of Will’s ex-wife, Eden (Tammy Blanchard).  The invitation is rather curious and comes out of nowhere for the couple, as Will has not seen Eden in over two years.  Making the situation even more intense is the unspeakable tragedy that befell the two ex-lovers shortly before they split: the death of their young son, Ty.  Both of them seem rather apprehensive of the celebration, but I suppose Will wants to go just to face down some of the demons of his past; things get off to a bad start when he hits a coyote on the way, and beats it with a tire iron to put it out of its misery (you can always rely on a horror film to feature an obvious case of foreshadowing).  Oh, and another little bit of weirdness: Eden still lives in the same house she shared with Will, and the same place that Ty met his premature end.

When they arrive, they find that they were not the only ones asked to attend: There’s Tommy and his partner Miguel, and then friends Ben, Claire, and Gina.  One of Gina’s friends, Choi (I thought they were saying “Troy” the whole time), is supposedly on his way, but since he always runs late, no one is concerned.  After meeting, or re-acquainting himself with all of the guests, the hosts make their first appearance: Along with Eden is David, a man whom she met while attending a session for grief counseling.  As David speaks to the gathered group of (former) friends, Will notices the figure of a woman staring at him from a bedroom.  This is Sadie, and she is either pretty clearly insane, or drugged; she met Eden and David while the two of them were on a retreat to Mexico, and moved in with them upon their return to the States.  Will seems a little thrown off by this, but no one else is; this is a reoccurring theme throughout.  Also making things weirder is the random inclusion of Pruitt, a creepy and quiet man that arrives late, and introduces himself as a friend of Eden and David.

As everyone starts getting settled in, David decides that’s the perfect time to play for them a video of a group that they joined, called “The Invitation”, that was designed to help victims of trauma heal through spiritualism.  Only, the video is of a dying woman being comforted by a man who has the appearance and mannerisms of a cult leader; the guests are disturbed when the woman dies onscreen, right before their very eyes.  A bunch of little things keep adding up: the game of “I Want” in which Pruitt reveals he murdered his wife in a drunken rage, David insisting on locking the door from the inside, the guest that demands to leave, only to be escorted out by Pruitt, and the list goes on and on.  Yet anytime Will, who is the only one alerted to the weirdness and escalating menace of the night, voices his opinions, the other one-dimensional characters try to allay his fears by blaming it on the emotions from his emotional trauma.  At first, it makes sense, but once it continues to happen as things are clearly going off the deep end, it just feels like a frequently-used (and increasingly frustrating) fallback option for writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi.

As I said, the film enthralled me until the very end, when all hell breaks loose and it basically becomes a typically-tepid exercise of “killers vs. main stars” with little in the way of intensity or excitement.  It’s just a parade of predictable violence; we know who will live and who’s expendable, and the film never has the guts to stray from that well-worn formula.  Then there’s the ending, which is beyond dumb.  It’s the kind of ending that you’re either going to love or hate; clearly, I hated it, to the point that it undid a lot of the goodwill the movie had managed to build up to that point.  For a movie that already requires its audience to suspend disbelief for most of its duration, throwing us an ending like this—one that is even more preposterous an idea than anything that came before it—is a pretty brave, albeit misguided, creative choice.

The performances are uniformly average for this kind of film, though I did think Logan Marshall-Green was fantastic as Will.  Part of this is by default: he’s the only good character that the screenwriters spend any amount of time fleshing out.  Whereas the others come off as cardboard cutouts that only serve to try to calm him (and, by extension, the audience) down and allay him of his ever-so-obvious suspicions, Will comes off as the perfect anti-horror film hero: he is always aware of his surroundings, not afraid to speak up, and able to defend himself when required.  Thus, he is the only one that’s ever required to emote; his anger and sorrow are palpable, without a single hint of cheesiness or artificiality.  It’s really a solid performance, especially considering the rather lukewarm material, and one of the big reasons the movie manages to work at all.

Despite its many, gaping flaws, which are becoming even more obvious to me as I type this up, I’m still recommending it, but with loads of caution.  No matter what I think now, it doesn’t change that I was genuinely enthralled while watching it, even as the twists and turns became stupider and stupider.  It asks a lot of its audience, but if you fit the bill--namely that you have no problems casting reality out the window and forgiving the actions of increasingly stupid characters, and you have the patience required of a movie that takes pride in slowly (SLOWLY) unfolding its story—then this just might be the film for you.  Although, now that I think about it, that ending might not be for anyone...

RECAP: As a disclaimer, I was hopped up on (legally prescribed) Adderall and caffeine (which I’m sensitive to) while watching this, and as a result, found myself as paranoid and nervous as the main character; the atmosphere slowly (SLOWLY) cultivates a growing feeling of dread, and every little added layer to the story got my heart racing a little bit more.  The main character, Will, is also well-written, and ably performed by Logan-Marshall Green.  However, as it rolls on, it keeps demanding more and more from the viewer to forgive its more glaring weaknesses, and then has the nerve to cap everything off with a groan-inducing ending that pretty much defies all logic.  The beginning and middle were tense and interesting enough for me to slightly recommend it, but you’ll be better served by toning down, if not flat-out ignoring, all the hype.

RATING: 6/10  

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