“Tonight is the night our faith is made real.”
I adore horror movies that can conceivably work as plays. Think of Funny Games, or Bug (which actually started as a play). There’s a sense of immediacy at work, which gives way to urgency, which, in the right hands, gives way to almost unbearable tension. In any story that takes place in one room, there’s a sense of inescapability, both for the characters and the audience, and that inescapability denies catharsis, giving us only the horror of being trapped. (This is why the car ride in Hereditary is, for my money, the most effectively upsetting sequence of the film.) The Invitation, directed by the great Karyn Kusama (Destroyer), is a worthy addition to this canon. There are moments here of white-knuckle tension, along scenes of unbearable heartache, and it’s a testament to Kusama’s steady hand (and the script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi) that nothing in this film contradicts itself.
Will (a nicely bearded Logan Marshall-Green, making a good case for himself as a leading man) has been invited to a dinner party at the house of his ex-wife and her new husband. He brings along his girlfriend, Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi); this will be the first time Will has seen his ex in two years, and he doesn’t want to face it alone. Things get off to a rocky start: on the way to the Hollywood Hills, Will hits a coyote and is forced to put it out of its misery, all in front of Kira. Things don’t get much better from that point.
Will’s ex, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), and her husband, David (Michael Huisman), are immediately off-putting. There’s a perfect synthesis of directing and acting here, as neither Eden nor David come off as hostile or threatening; they’re just…off. Huisman in particular excels, imbuing David with equal parts smugness and sincerity. Blanchard is terrific as well, her eyes somehow both distant and focused. Will is suspicious from the get-go, and only finds more reasons to support that suspicion. One party guest, Choi, is missing; one of the guests is Sadie (Lindsay Burdge), an offbeat and intense woman whom Eden and David met in Mexico; and before long, an older friend of Eden and David’s named Pruitt arrives. Pruitt is played by the exceptional John Carroll Lynch; the only downside to having him in so many scenes is that you seldom want to watch anyone else.
There’s an atmosphere of unease, a low thrum of electricity humming throughout the film; every scene has the potential to erupt into something horrifying. Kusama is able to replicate some of what makes Rosemary’s Baby so effective, the idea that behind a normal facade lurks some truly deranged ideation. In one of the film’s most effective scenes, Eden and David screen a video for the party. In it, a man named Dr. Joseph (Toby Huss, excellent) talks about a movement called The Invitation, in which peace if found through death. He holds a woman’s hands as she breathes her last. This is essentially a snuff film, and the party reacts accordingly. David is apologetic to the group, and here his sincerity goes a long way. We know he doesn’t mean it, we know that he’s manipulating the group, but it makes sense that the characters here would accept his apology. There is an echo of Midsommar here, or any great cult thriller: the more reasonable the messenger, the more seemingly reasonable the ideas.
There are so many great scenes here that enumerating them all would take this review into the 2,000 word range. The revelation that Will and Eden lost their son is handled with subtlety and grace; it doesn’t seem gratuitous. Lynch gives an excellent monologue about his wife, and how he accidentally killed her. It’s as horrific as it is riveting, and were I an actor, this would be the monologue I auditioned with.
When The Invitation‘s calm facade shatters, it does so with nightmarish efficiency. First, Will listens to a voicemail from Choi, saying that he’s early and asking Will to pick up dessert (Choi gets a great LA line: “I don’t wanna drive back down the hill to the fuckin’ patisserie”). He sees Sadie in the mirror, making odd faces. He finds a laptop and reads more about The Invitation and their mission: peace through death. When David pours drinks for everyone, Will smashes his glass, fearing it poisoned. But it’s too late for another guest, who drinks the wine and winds up dead on the ground, foaming at the mouth.
Here is where it would be easy for The Invitation to turn itself into a gory splatter-fest. While there is a solid basis for a B-movie here, it’s more effective, and realistic, for its restraint. It’s not so much an orgiastic explosion as it is a natural evolution of the evening. Each scene of The Invitation leads inexorably to the next; there is no fat in the film’s 100 minutes. At the end, almost all of the party are dead, and a wounded Will and Kira stagger outside, seeing Los Angeles descend into chaos as members of the cult citywide enact their plans. Yet, this still does not break the intimate spell that the film casts. The Invitation doesn’t show its hand until its final shot, when we see that this is not only a horror film but also a ground-level look at the beginning of an apocalypse.
But it’s more than that. It would be one thing to recommend The Invitation if it were just scary, but this film has a lot on its mind. There is both heart and brain on display here. Eden dies telling Will that she misses their son, and the moment of grace lands amidst all the carnage. The Invitation is about a lot: trauma, grief, freedom, and admitting to yourself that you are not broken, that the worst part of your life does not define you, as difficult as that may be. It’s about our inability to cope with death, and the way we can contort our thinking to make the great unknown just a little less frightening, a little more comforting. Watch this movie. Watch it twice.
10/1: Hellraiser / The Invitation
10/2: Splice / Banshee Chapter
10/3: Jennifer’s Body / Raw
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist / Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
10/5: Kill List / A Field in England
10/6: Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge / A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
10/8: Ginger Snaps / Creep
10/9: Cube / Creep 2
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) / The Ritual
10/11: Hell House LLC / The Taking of Deborah Logan
10/12: Re-Animator / From Beyond
10/13: Beetlejuice / Sleepy Hollow
10/14: Idle Hands / The Lords of Salem
10/15: The Ring / Noroi: The Curse
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer / The Monster
10/17: Night of the Living Dead / Train to Busan
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone / Southbound
10/19: Event Horizon / Dreamcatcher
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / The Bad Seed
10/21: Eyes Without a Face / Goodnight Mommy
10/22: The Strangers / The Strangers: Prey at Night
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness / The Void
10/24: The Amityville Horror / Honeymoon
10/25: Gerald’s Game / Emelie
10/26: The Monster Squad / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/27: Veronica / Jacob’s Ladder
10/28: High Tension / You’re Next
10/29: The Innkeepers / Bug
10/30: The People Under the Stairs / Vampires
10/31: Saw / Saw II
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