THE INVITATION Review

The Invitation is a home invasion movie that remains contained. It is a film about paranoia that keeps each potential threat within each characters field of vision. It is a film of formalities and the edge of such expectations some can be pushed to before destroying such pleasantries in order to cut through one another with the truth. At least, truth from a certain perspective. And that is the key to this largely successful horror/thriller as it operates within the realm of a certain number of perspectives with our lead constantly forcing us to question his particular view and if it is reliable or not. Director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) mounts the film as a dinner party gathering between old friends coming together at the request of a couple they haven't heard from in years. Immediately the circumstances are strange as our protagonist, Will (Logan Marshall-Green of Prometheus), questions the motivations of both Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman) as they seemingly have little interest in re-connecting or beginning relationships anew, but rather have brought their once close-knit circle of friends back together for reasons that are both mysterious and ultimately selfish. While The Invitation is certainly a tense and involving film it is also an experiment in how slow one can actually drag out the burn of its mounting anxieties and confusions. There is an interesting and excellent forty-five minutes within what we're treated to here, but dragging the events out to full feature length make long stretches of the film feel more tedious than tense. That said, when the film is on a roll it is indeed on fire and with a very distinct aesthetic, a haunting score from Theodore Shapiro, and truly affecting performances most notably from Marshall-Green and Blanchard, The Invitation proves to be a gathering worth attending.