The Invitation (2015)

You are cordially invited to a dinner party. There’s just one catch, however: it’s at the house you used to share with your now ex-wife and her new lover. If this isn’t already a premise for possible destruction and tension, then I’m not sure what is. We’re all adults here though, aren’t we? Let’s dive into this 2015 pulse pounder together.

The Invitation is one of those films where the less you know, the better your viewing experience will be. We open with our lead, Will (a fantastic Logan Marshall Green), driving to the dinner party of the century with his seemingly new partner, Kira, played by Emayatzy Corinealdi. You can tell from the get go that Will isn’t too keen on the evening’s plans, but perhaps he feels that going through with it won’t leave him with any “what if” scenarios. After accidentally hitting a coyote in transit to the get-together and being forced to mercy-kill it, Will and Kira arrive at his former home.

It isn’t long before we are introduced to Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her lover, David (Michiel Huisman), whom she met at a support group while grieving the loss of her and Will’s son. Considering their past, it seems strange how welcoming the both of them are to Will and Kira, but it can be assumed they’re attempting to move on and start anew. As Will attempts to adjust to the changes, he encounters all of his old friends inside. Here we have Gina (Michelle Krusiec), Tommy (Mike Doyle), Miguel (Jordi Vilasuso), Ben (a comedic Jay Larson), and Claire (Marieh Delfino), with the absence of one other friend Choi (Karl Yune), who we have been told is running late. There’s just one person who doesn’t look familiar to Will, and that’s because she isn’t one of the friends in the group.

After catching a couple glimpses of her throughout the house, Will and the rest of our party are introduced to a younger woman named Sadie (an extremely strange Lindsay Burdge), whom Edin and David claim they met while on a trip to Mexico. Her mannerisms and responses to certain social situations are absolutely uncanny, leaving us as the viewers uncomfortable and confused whenever she attempts to interact with the group. Will begins to explore other parts of the house, reliving the incident of his son’s death and more through a series of telling flashbacks. So far, it’s hard to see Will benefiting from this situation at all. Was coming here really a good move on his behalf?

As if the company of one stranger just wasn’t enough, we hear another knock on the door. After David retrieves it, we are introduced to another of his and Eden’s friends, a tall and still man that goes by the name of Pruitt (a fantastically mysterious John Carroll Lynch). Eden and David mention that they, along with Sadie and Pruitt, are members of a group they joined that goes by the name of “The Invitation”. They go on to explain how it’s about coping with the grief we experience in a more spiritual manner. This brings David to retrieving a laptop from the other room to show the others more about the group and their intentions.

The footage they are shown is nothing short of chilling, for it entails what appears to be the group leader comforting a woman who is on her deathbed. As she expels her final breaths, the leader breaks into a speech about how she can now let go of everything and is finally at peace. Not only is the footage disturbing to just about all of the guests, but it even reaches a point where some of them are physically upset by what they’ve been shown, failing to see any real merit to what the hosts are proposing to the others. An attempt to break the discomfort in the atmosphere is inevitably shattered by Pruitt sharing a story that starts off questionable, and ends in a strangely horrifying way.

 What is going on at this party? Who are these strange people whom are just as welcome as Eden’s life- long friends? Why can’t Will shake the feeling that something here just isn’t right? Director Karyn Kusama, as well as writers Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay, do a seamless job at creating a solid film, and tension you couldn’t cut through if you tried. The writers are simply fantastic at setting up a story that slowly progresses as the night unfolds, and in ways you might not ever imagine. To say everything that happens in the film would just be me regurgitating factual information. I gave you a little bit to chew on, but not enough to spill the beans. See it for yourself, and tell me if that final shot gives you the jitters, as it did for me.