The Invitation

Grade: C

Many films these days turn out to be a parable or allegory about something, and I’ve heard moviegoers lament about how everything is so “woke,” and they yearn for a piece of entertainment without an “agenda” being “preached” at them or “shoved down [our] throats.” Their wish is granted with The Invitation – a movie rife with opportunities to make a social commentary on a variety of topics, particularly class and race – but it mostly eschews all of that and settles into lame horror fare. You want a safe, dull, sanitized movie with nothing to say? Here you go.

Nathalie Emmanuel – from Game of Thrones and several Fast and Furious films – plays Evie, a struggling ceramics artist who works as a waitress at cocktail parties. Her father died a while ago, and her mom just passed from cancer, and – being an only child – is now alone. She happens upon a DNA test for an ancestry dot com type website, and finds that she has a large extended family on the other side of the pond. Very British and very white. When Oliver – a second cousin of hers – visits America and they meet up, he enthusiastically invites her to a wedding in the English countryside. She agrees to go, and one of the first people she meets at the sprawling manor is Walter. He, conveniently, is not a blood relative, and they take a liking to each other.

During her stay, Evie witnesses and has some unsettling encounters, particularly at night, which she completely fails to bring up to anybody, much less Walter. Seems like that would have been an obvious conversation point. The family at the mansion showers so much love and attention on Evie that she feels embarrassed.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve pretty much seen the movie. If you recognize the names Jonathan Harker and Mina, you know where this is going. They turn up here. To keep things PG-13, the writers have characters awkwardly say words like “frick,” “frig,” or “F” in their dialogue. They saved their one F bomb for late in the movie. Mina says it. It’s admittedly a very good line.

After a top-heavy first and second act where little to nothing happens, the twist is revealed, and once we’re done thinking “what…that’s it?” – we are then free to be disappointed and underwhelmed by ho-hum fight choreography and dark lighting which makes the action confusing to follow. The Invitation is bland, uninspired, and uninteresting. Imagine what Jordan Peele could have done with it.

Grade: C