The Invitation (2016) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 21

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At this party, it’s BYOBB. Bring your own body bag.

The Invitation is a tense thriller that will give introverts a new appreciation of avoiding social obligations. It delves into the dangers of repressed grief and trauma within the social setting of a friendly dinner party. And it continues a week of female-directed horror films on 31 Days of Horror.

Before Viewing

Honestly, this trailer looks like it could be one of those videos where they re-edit a comedy into a psychological thriller. It’s tense with ominous music, but it’s uncertain what is happening. A couple is invited to an old friend’s house with a bunch of other people. Apparently, weird things are happening. Positive reviews punctuate the trailer, which ends with someone mentioning someone else’s faith being tested. Hope you all go to The Invitation that was sent.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend, Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi), are on their way to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), and her new boyfriend, David (Michiel Huisman). On the way there, Will’s car strikes a coyote on the road, but doesn’t kill it. He must finish it off with a tire iron. At the house, they are greeted by Eden and David, but Will is clearly distracted. This was his old house with Eden, and he has several flashbacks to moments with his son. They are the last to arrive, except for Choi, the boyfriend of Gina (Michelle Krusiec), who is apparently late. They can’t get in touch with him due to poor cell service in the Hollywood Hills.

Will sees a young, naked woman in one of the rooms, which confuses him. She soon emerges, clothed, and Eden introduces her as Sadie (Lindsay Burdge), a young woman whom they met in Mexico during their retreat, and who is currently living with them. Eden shares with Will and Ben (Jay Larson) that she has gotten rid of her pain, which Ben mocks. She slaps him, but quickly apologizes. Will reconnects with Claire (Marieh Delfino), whom he also hasn’t seen in two years. Another friend of the couple arrives, Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch), and David locks the door–ostensibly due to a recent home invasion in the area. Will seems suspicious of what’s happening.

Wandering through the house, Will sees Eden hide a container of pills, which he later discovers are phenobarbitol. Eden and David tell their friends they have discovered a new way to deal with their pain and grief, called The Invitation. Miguel (Jordi Vilasuso) jokes that it’s a cult, but David says it’s not like that. He shows a video of the group’s founder, Dr. Joseph (Toby Huss), sitting with a woman as she dies. The group has a mixed reaction to this, but mostly feels it’s a little awkward. David asks them to play a game called “I Want,” where they express their desires. Sadie says she loves them all, even though she just met some. Gina jokingly asks for some of David’s cocaine, which he provides honestly. Pruitt shares that he killed his wife and went to prison, but only The Invitation truly helped him be a better person.

Claire says she’s uncomfortable with the discussion and has had enough. She is allowed to leave. Pruitt moves his car as Will watches from the window, but soon Claire and Pruitt are out of sight as David talks to Will. He feels Will’s suspicion is offensive and feels like he’s done nothing to deserve it. Will is uncertain whether it’s not his own paranoia. He has a flashback to the death of his son, believing that being in this house again may be affecting him. Will tells Tommy (Mike Doyle), Miguel’s boyfriend, that something is wrong. The others sit for dinner as Will steps outside for air. He receives a voicemail from Choi (Karl Yune), saying he arrived at the house early. Will returns to the dining room and makes a scene, questioning Eden and David about the whereabouts of Choi. They take umbrage at his accusations.

The doorbell rings. It’s Choi, who apologizes. He was here earlier, but then work called and he had to leave. Will apologizes to David & Eden, as well as Kira, and takes a moment to go look at his son’s old room. Inside, he finds a laptop with a further message from Dr. Joseph about “getting started” and remembering their reward. Meanwhile, David lights a red lantern and hangs it in his backyard, which overlooks the hills. When Will returns to the table, Eden and David are passing out small glasses of liqueur for a toast. Gina drinks hers immediately, but Will, sensing something is still going on, tosses his aside and knocks the other glasses off the table, urging people to stop. Sadie attacks Will, but he knocks her aside and unconscious.

Everyone is shocked by Will’s behavior until they notice Gina, dead, foaming at the mouth. David shoots Miguel dead while he is performing CPR on Gina. Pruitt kills Choi and Ben, with David’s help. The hosts try to explain that they were chosen and can stop all the hurt by just continuing with their plan. Will and Kira sneak off, but Pruitt finds and attacks Will. Kira beats Pruitt to death with a wine bottle. Eden shoots and injures Will before turning the gun on herself. Tommy, who was injured earlier, tackles and stabs David while Sadie dies on the couch from loss of blood. Eden begs Will to take her into the garden. She finally admits she misses their son so much and dies. Will, Kira, and Tommy survive and see over a dozen other red lanterns hanging in the hills as helicopters fly past, as the sound of sirens and screams echoes in the night.

“It’s like a scream trapped inside me.” – Will

What sets The Invitation apart from other films is its quiet menace. Everyone knows what is going to happen, or thinks they know, but the film lacks any reveals for 80% of its runtime, putting the audience in the same boat as Will. Perhaps everyone is just manifesting something within them and reading signs that aren’t there? This is the third film in a week of horror films directed by women, following Near Dark by Kathryn Bigelow and Jennifer’s Body by Karyn Kusama. The Invitation is also by Kusama, and is an entirely different style of film from her previous one, being a purely psychological thriller with little to no humor and no supernatural elements. It’s a classic thriller about the power of people to kill others based on evil or misguided intentions, in this case, a cult.

The Invitation is a solid psychological thriller that invokes other elements of the genre, but also subverts audience expectations in new and powerful ways. The title of the film is enigmatic, creating a question in the viewer’s mind. What is the invitation referred to? At first, it’s just a request to join a dinner party with some friends. Later, it becomes the name of a cult that Eden and David have become part of. It’s also an invitation to the viewer to join the filmmakers on an emotional rollercoaster ride. The film falls into the “dinner party from hell” genre of thrillers, where guests are invited to a dinner party for nefarious purposes, which is usually a killing. Other examples of this type of film include Would You Rather? (2012) and Truth or Dare (also 2012), not to be confused with the 2018 supernatural horror version. Audiences are conditioned in these types of films that the banal and blasé normalcy of any situation is suspect, creating a setting that is inherently dangerous regardless of its outside appearances. The Invitation invokes these vibes in the same way Red State does. Both have culty overtones with characters murdering others in the name of God or enlightenment, confused about the real meaning of religion. The Invitation also has some elements similar to other, unreleased films at this time. The white guy, Will, driving his new black girlfriend to meet his old friends, has serious inverse vibes to Get Out, even though Will is set up to be the protagonist of the film at the beginning. The drive to dinner also invokes Death of a Unicorn, as an animal is ominously killed, and focused on as the characters are headed to a weekend away. This sequence, where Will runs over a coyote that doesn’t fully die and needs to be beaten to death with a tire iron, returns thematically later in the film. When he mentions the incident, Pruitt remarks that it was a good thing and a mercy, which it was. Will put the creature out of its misery as best he can. This is David, Eden, and Pruitt’s plan for handling their friends. They are to be a mercy, and put them out of their misery as fast as possible. As the final reckoning comes to fruition and Pruitt stalks Will and Kira, she ends up beating Pruitt to death with a champagne bottle. A mercy, to be sure.

The real themes of the film are about grief and trauma, and how they can damage relationships and perceptions. For viewers who understand the conceits of the horror/thriller genre, Will’s actions are completely justified. He is suspicious of Eden’s new husband. He is dubious (along with Claire) about the new “cult” that Eden has joined. He’s wary of Eden’s new “friends.” But mostly, he really wants to know what happened to Choi. The audience is with him, too. All of this is suspect, and the other partygoers laughing away the coincidences and perceptions of impropriety is maddening. Why can’t they see it? The culmination of Will’s paranoia includes his outburst, suggesting that David had something to do with the missing Choi. Of course, the doorbell rings, and Choi is revealed to have just been late because of excuses. The film is close to being done at this point. Has Will been an unreliable narrator this whole time? Can it really be that his grief over the loss of his son has put him into a state where he can no longer connect with people? Possibly, but in this case, he’s absolutely correct to rely on his gut. His final outburst is completely justified, where he screams at his friends, “Why is everyone so f***ing polite?” This highlights some of the best horror in the film. The characters are all put in a proverbial pot of water where the temperature is slowly turned up, and like the frog, none of them notice. Except for Will. The social constraints of the dinner party, meeting a new spouse of their friend, and tiptoeing around the landmines of past suicide attempts and dead children have made everyone oblivious to the danger in front of them. The belief that politeness is still required when fighting for your life is horrific. Especially when one of the people you loved and thought loved you is actively gaslighting your actions and trying to kill you.

Two years prior to the events of the film, Will and Eden lost their young son, Ty, in some accident at a birthday party. It’s implied it had to do with a baseball bat, but never explicitly shown. Parents can see many scenarios around children playing with baseball bats that can cause serious injury. Flashbacks indicate that Eden tried to commit suicide in the kitchen due to her grief over the death of Ty. The couple divorced, and Eden met David, heading to Mexico for an extended time (or they met in Mexico), where they fell in with Doctor Joseph and his grief-processing ideologies. From her standpoint, she has gone through counseling and confronted all the feelings that were bothering her. She has let go of the negative energy and believes that Will (and the others) should as well. Will, on the other hand, hasn’t gone through any grief counseling or professional sessions. He is still processing Ty’s death. To Eden, she’s the one who has done the work and holds an air of superiority over her ex-husband. She thinks she is over the grief, but she’s really not, which leads her to kill herself in exasperation over all the violence going on around her. Will mentions he’s thought of killing himself, but ends up not going through with it because he has things to live for. Eden has only put a stopper in her feelings. Having attempted suicide before, she ultimately follows the same path to her death, proving that it’s impossible to rely on outward perceptions of normalcy or depression. What’s underneath may not be the same emotions.

Whether this is Eden’s own ideals or those of the cult she became involved in is unclear. Regardless, her feelings of trauma and grief have been manipulated by Dr. Joseph and others for sick and twisted purposes. The actions of David, Eden, Pruitt, and Sadie are reminiscent of other groups. Miguel and Tommy tease Will over his perception that things are “a little bit weird.” They joke that things might be a bit “Mansony,” implying Charles Manson and his group of young hippies who killed Sharon Tate and others. Sadie seems to evoke this aspect the most, as a barefooted Squeaky Fromme. And while this plays out as an isolated incident during the course of the film, the end shows that this is not the case. David lights a red lantern in his garden, indicating that this house is part of The Invitation. The final shot depicts over a dozen other red lanterns in the small hillside community, as part of an orchestrated murder/suicide pact between the cultists. It’s reminiscent of the Jonestown massacre, where Reverence Jim Jones convinced his followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid, as well as the Heaven’s Gate cult, which convinced followers to commit suicide in order to enter the next level of their theology.

Even though The Invitation is a female-directed film by Karyn Kusama, it’s different than her previous film, which features a lot of feminist themes. That is probably due to the way that the screenplay was created. Co-written by Kusama’s husband, Phil Hay, and his writing partner, Matt Manfredi, the story focuses on a male protagonist, but provides no particular motivation towards gender one way or the other. The trauma of grief and guilt over the death of a child can manifest in anyone, thereby making this a more accessible film. For me, the horror of the psychological film, as opposed to monster and paranormal terrors, always hits closer. The Invitation, and other films in its subgenre (like The Gift), are much more plausible in today’s world and therefore more unsettling. Stay tuned for other female-led horror films for the rest of the week on 31 Days of Horror.

Assorted Musings

• Michael Huisman, David, was also seen earlier this month as a soldier in World War Z.
• The fate of Claire is left up to the viewer’s imagination in the final film. Pruitt walks around the front wall to tell her something, and that’s the last we see of her. Unfortunately, according to Kusama, there’s a deleted scene that shows her ultimate fate: dead and dumped in bushes outside the house.
• The film is also reminiscent of a recent Sci-Fi Saturdays film, Coherence. In that film, a dinner party turns weird, but not because anyone is in a murdery cult. They are caught up in the events of a multiversal bleed, which makes all the characters question their happiness in the world.