Rating: 8 of 10
A slow-burn psychological thriller, during which you might predict one, or maybe even two of the twists, but the ending will leave you breathless.
Synopsis: “A haunted man attending a dinner party at the house he once called home becomes gripped with paranoia that his ex-wife and her new husband are harboring an insidious agenda.” (source)
My thoughts: We enter the movie as Will (Logan Marshall-Green) who’s accepted a dinner invitation from his ex-wife, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), and her new husband, David (Michiel Huisman). So all of the evening’s events unfold through Will’s eyes, and that’s the key to THE INVITATION’s brilliance!
Right away we can feel the tension in the room; Will may be at the dinner but he certainly doesn’t want to be, and even the hosts don’t seem all that happy that he accepted the invitation. We’re on edge almost as soon as Will walks in the door: what exactly happened between Will and Eden? Why did they get divorced? And, if the divorce was as contentious as it appears, why was Will invited? Then we watch, from the edge of our seats, as a group of people so programmed to be polite, actively ignore their sense that something’s off.
Will’s the only person who asks the questions we, the audience, are thinking, and he’s constantly told to calm down.
Until the very end, we’re never sure if what our gut is telling us is actually Will’s reality, or just his paranoia.
Highly recommended if you enjoyed movies like CREEP or SOUND OF MY VOICE.
Check out THE INVITATION on XYZ Films | on IMDb | on Watch the trailer
(Watched on Netflix 9/7/2016)