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The Invitation

9/13/2016

7 Comments

 

C+
​2.43

Old friends reunite at the home of an estranged member of their group, who may or may not have ulterior motives.

Directed by Karyn Kusama
Starring Logan Marshall-Green, Tammy Blanchard, and Michiel Huisman
Initial Review by Lane Davis

Picture
​“The Invitation” is a slow simmering pot of a film that rewards the patience of those that stay to watch it boil over. It’s a film that relies on mood, shadow, and atmosphere; sticking with it may be hard, because like any terrible party, you might want to find an excuse to leave. I resisted the urge to break the watching of the film up into two or more segments and I’m glad I did. Once the final port was poured, the uncomfortable dysfunction of the first hour and twenty minutes finally erupted into the chaos you knew had been brewing at the molecular level. Suspicions are confirmed and the viewer finds a perverse satisfaction in finally being able to say, “I knew that was going to happen!”

​The less you know about the film going in, the better, but even without spoilers the story is a familiar one.  The basic premise is this: Will and his new girlfriend get an invitation to a party, hosted by Will’s ex-wife and new boyfriend, that ends up being a recruitment dinner for a cult. I’ll stop there because five minutes into the film (and a little coyote murdering scene to do some helpful foreshadowing for us) and anyone who’s familiar with the term “Helter Skelter” can guess where things are going.
 
The film has its rough edges, for sure. While I personally enjoy slowly plotted films that take a while to develop, I could have probably found ten minutes of Will (well played by a ruggedly brooding Logan Marshall-Green) staring off into the woods/hills/dark/pool to shave off the run time without any adverse effects on the film’s tension. I also found the flashback scenes of Will and Eden’s dead son to be a little too sentimentally convenient and the resulting mixed emotions of grief and anger to be a bit overwrought for reality. Of course, maybe that’s just how people who live in Hollywood act. Who am I to judge?
 
The film was shot on a shoestring, which tends to eventually show up somewhere. For “The Invitation,” the corner cutting was evident here and there; especially in the early scenes of awkward socialization, I could almost hear the director’s voice saying: “Okay, act weird…good, fine…okay, we’re on a budget so do it quicker…annnddd....cut!” I wish the actors had been given a little more breathing room in those scenes, though Michiel Huisman and John Carroll Lynch make the most of what they were given.
 
It’s the director, Karyn Kusama that makes the film work—she’s incredibly restrained with the camera and the narrative, and it’s the little twist at the end that ties everything up in a neat, little murderous bow and that left me satisfied with the time spent in the weird world of Los Angeles dinner parties. I hope others found it as unsettlingly enjoyable as I did.
 
Grade: B+
7 Comments
Admin
9/13/2016 01:26:12 pm

Reserved for replies to initial review.

Reply
Bryan
9/14/2016 11:09:02 am

TL;DR: The only thing worse than having an awkward conversation is watching other people have an awkward conversation.

Sudden car crashes are jolting and here, a great way to start a movie. However, I'm not sure why Will had to use a tire iron to bludgeon the coyote to death, did the car not have reverse?

Based on knowing this movie was a thriller or horror, I knew something bad was going to happen - but was unsure when. The tension waned from very high to very low, but mostly it was just awkward conversation. The only thing worse than having an awkward conversation is watching other people have an awkward conversation. The characters seemed to be unnatural in their rolls, you could tell they were acting - I was never drawn in to this dinner. There are very few times in my life I've sided with the idea of East or West coast snobbery. This week brought up two of them. First, on the America's Test Kitchen Podcast, a guest was talking about the 4 cookbooks which have had the largest effect on how America cooks. I had only heard of one. I'm guessing this is because I don't read The Atlantic. Second, watching The Invitation reminded me that people in LA are weird - they're boring and annoying. Maybe it was the acting or maybe people in LA are just constantly putting up a facade. If that was the goal of this movie, to pretend to be snobby LA people, The Invitation nailed it.

Michiel Huisman, playing the host, David, is as uncharming here as he is in Game of Thrones. The best roll was Toby Huss as Dr. Joseph. He is also in Halt and Catch Fire, but pulls off cult leader quite well.

The Invitation had some scraps of quality film making - Choi's arrival was a bit too cute, but I appreciated it adding to the guests thinking Will is paranoid. The bloodshed payoff was quick and dirty - I liked it, but it could have happened earlier or been a bit more suspenseful as the survivors are sneaking around the house. I never really feared for them.

I couldn't recommend this movie, nor would I watch it again, but it had just enough suspense to keep it from being a complete debacle. C-

Reply
Jon
9/15/2016 12:33:17 am

The Invitation mixes two sub-genres, one I'm a big fan of and the other I'm fairly blase on. Whenever a film introduces a cult, I am in. My favorite movie of the 2010's remains The Master, and there are plenty of other cult dramas on my list of superlatives. It's such a fertile ground for drama, usually following a person as they fall down the rabbit hole of logical fallacies and wishful thinking, things I'm already on the lookout for in real life and appreciate onscreen. What can dampen my enthusiasm for cult plot mechanics is when they take place in a mumblecore setting, a genre I'm getting tired of. I think Karyn Kusama nails the cult aspect while flubbing the easily-flubbed mumblecore hallmark of naturalistic dialogue. This is a movie that looks much better than it sounds.

The biggest problem I had with The Invitation is that I didn't connect with any of the characters. The one possible exception would be Will, who never gets beyond irritable and standoffish, not endearing qualities even as I understand why he's exhibiting them. Kira mostly functions as a support system. The cult members are all plainly hiding something, so their weird behavior makes sense even as it prevents any kind of meaningful doubt about their purpose from creeping in. The other houseguests just don't seem to handle their dialogue well. The gay couple, the schlubby guy, and Choi and Gina either don't make much of an impression or sound wooden and false. All these characterizations make sense from a story standpoint, like of course Will would be on edge returning to this house, and his friends might be made uncomfortable by his agitation and therefore get put on edge themselves. However, there remains a distance between the awkwardness of the situation and my desire for actors that are more relaxed and say their lines in a more natural way. Maybe this movie was fatally flawed for me, as I certainly never said to myself, 'Ah, not Miguel!' when the shit hits the fan.

In one of the thus-far best movies of 2016, The Witch, it is apparent early on that there is actually a witch in the woods and all these Puritans' worst fears will soon come true. I wrote in my review of that movie that there's an alternate version where there isn't a witch and the family just thinks there is. I don't think that potential alternate version harms The Witch because that movie is so about immersion in the time period and putting the viewer inside these peoples' heads, where Satan and witches are very real. Here, I do think the alternate version of The Invitation, where the possibility that the cult members don't actually intend anyone harm, would make this movie better. I went into this knowing nothing, and it became immediately apparent, just from how Tammy Blanchard's Eden was speaking and how Michiel Huisman's David entered the room, that things would inevitably dissolve. Then they cast classic scary guy John Carroll Lynch as the non-friend. Even when Choi turns up, I knew this was just a postponement instead of a turning point. The thought in my head wasn't, "Maybe Will's wrong;" it was, "Now, they won't believe him." If Kusama and writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi and some of the actors held their cards closer to the vest, I think the violent climax would have had a much greater impact.

Reply
Jon
9/15/2016 12:33:41 am

So if The Invitation landed for me as 75 minutes of buildup to 15 minutes of explosion, was it all worth it even as I'm tapping my feet, waiting for the blow up? Kinda. The interplay between the non-cult members didn't work and there's classic horror movie dumb behavior in not leaving earlier, but this is where the cult aspect saves it for me. I love seeing these kind of recruitment scenes and interactions between the brainwashed and the brain-filthy-with-skepticism, because they immediately put me in a place where I wonder what I would do, a great place for cinema to bring a viewer. Do I call out the Argument From Popularity I'm witnessing and dive into a delightful, if heated, argument, or do I just get my coat, finish my glass of expensive wine, and leave? Do I flip out about being evangelized to under false pretenses or do I sit quietly, logging details for the fun story I have later, which ends with 'and I never spoke to them again?' Scenes like these kept me going when less interesting stuff was on the table.

On a the directorial level, Kusama, with her weird, discordant resume of Jennifer's Body and Aeon Flux, is doing much better with framing than she is with actors, with several exceptions. I appreciated the look of The Invitation, with several impressive shots by cinematographer Bobby Shore, particularly when the creepy live-in maid is propositioning Will by the pool. The dark color palette of the house and the suddenness of the choppy, disconcerting flashbacks go a long way in creating a foreboding mood, even while I wish there was less of it. Lynch is predictably strong in a role I expect from him, and Blanchard is oozing through her scenes, but in the lead, Logan Marshall-Green is pretty great, bringing a level of emotional intensity to everything he's doing. Kusama gets quite a performance out of him even as the actors around him aren't up to his level.

Another case of wanting the movie to be something it isn't, The Invitation works in pieces and fails in others. Anything with a cult is going to be in my wheelhouse, but so many of the conversations between the hard slaps and the wine bottle beatings do not have the feel of authenticity. I'm pretty mixed on The Invitation, which usually gets things to a C+.

Reply
Blair
9/15/2016 10:43:53 pm

I watched this movie without any ideas of what it was about. The Invitation proved to keep me guessing up until Gina's mouth foamed. I kept wondering, "is this movie going to punk us by just being about weird people who aren't actually up to anything - other than being super weird?" I even turned to Shane during the scene where the host husband lights the red lantern and said something like, "this is all going to be bullshit."

So I liked that it kept me guessing and that I went back and forth on whether something sinister was going down. I'm a pastor, so death, tragedy, grief are things that I'm not uncomfortable with...they are a real part of life. It kept me guessing because I get that people who've experienced tragedy, like the death of a son, would do or think some crazy shit to cope. But that crazy shit wouldn't necessarily mean they wanted to/ or felt responsible to kill people.

I'm with Jon in that I did not feel invested in any of the characters. "Oh no, that guy died!" Nope. I did find it interesting that so many red lanterns were lit at the end, that has made me continue to think about this movie and wonder, "could this really happen?"

If Trump can be the Republican candidate for president, why wouldn't a cult from Mexico be able to brainwash (and kill) half of Hollywood?

C+ for keeping me guessing and thinking of it post-film. I'll never watch it again. Kudos to the bald dude for being perfectly cast.

Reply
Cooker
9/19/2016 02:48:02 pm

So … are they or aren’t they in a cult? Who is this crazy girl that came back from Mexico with our friends and what’s up with this mysterious stranger named Pruitt? In a nutshell, I enjoyed the Invitation at its end conclusion, but it took way too long to get anywhere.

At this conclusion, I also had a very strong Arlington Road vibe. The protagonist is paranoid, he’s struggling to cope with the death of a loved one which others attribute to the reasoning of his paranoia. It also left you with that creepy, “whoa, what the hell is this” feeling.

I had trouble keeping interest once the dinner party started. I didn’t find any characters interesting and therefore didn’t care about their “catching up.” Was anyone else extremely distracted during these scenes by the background music? There was loud background music right? I was watching in my hotel room and who knows, there could’ve been someone playing outside on the street.

When Gina started foaming at the mouth, we finally got our answer “yeah, it’s a cult.” I highly speculated it after the “death is so beautiful” video and the discovery/identification of the drugs in the bedroom. Not sure how I felt about the “failed mass suicide, but we all have to die, so let’s start shooting everyone” rampage. I guess it led to some intense action in a dark house. Why are movies so freakin’ dark these days, as in lighting? I can’t even tell what’s going on half the time.

Nice attempt. Too slow, too much “nothing going on.” I can agree with other grades and that the ending helped redeem it a little. Going C+ as well.

Reply
Phil
9/27/2016 01:49:20 pm

I'll just jump on and say I agree with most everything said, and I'll jump on the consensus C+ grade.

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