The Invitation (2022)

August 26, 2022 4:30 PM

After the death of her mother and having no other known relatives, Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) takes a DNA test... and discovers a long-lost cousin she never knew she had. Invited by her newfound family to a lavish wedding in the English countryside, she's at first seduced by the sexy aristocrat host but is soon thrust into a nightmare of survival as she uncovers twisted secrets in her family's history and the unsettling intentions behind their sinful generosity.

Directed by Jessica M. Thompson.

Rotten Tomatoes suggests this is a woof. But my kid and I see every horror movie that comes to the theater now, so we will let you know.

Now playing in theaters.

posted by DirtyOldTown (9 comments total)

There’s another pretty great horror movie called The Invitation and I don’t know why they didn’t call this something else.
posted by jeoc at 4:40 PM on August 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

I was considering seeing this, but it looks like the trailer already showed the whole movie.
posted by praemunire at 5:03 PM on August 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

After seeing a lot of bad word of mouth and terrible reviews for this, we canceled our tickets and decided to see the South Korean monster flick Alienoid instead.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:09 AM on August 27, 2022

That's too bad. I always liked Emmanuel in Game of Thrones and thought that her character (and so many others, and the whole show, really) was done dirty by the last season, and hope that she'll get some better gigs.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:06 AM on August 27, 2022

I'm not going to the theater for this -- I'm still masking indoors, and I have to be pretty excited about something to sign up for 90+ minutes of masking -- but I'm still curious about it. Plenty of the negative reviews are just that the film isn't scary, and that doesn't bother me at all. I actually prefer horror-adjacent (horror-flavored? horror-themed? horror-inflected?) films to scary ones.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:17 AM on August 30, 2022

Finally saw this.

This wasn't actually bad. I mean, it's just a Brides of Dracula retread, so there aren't any surprises. But everything about it looks great. Great looking actors, great looking sets/locations, great looking cinematography.

It would be a good movie to step a tween into horror with. I'm not mad about seeing it.

And Jessica Thompson's visual sense is so strong that with a better script, she might really have something.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:41 PM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I saw this last night. It's way too predictable to be a good movie, but it's fairly watchable, and it had some strengths. The visuals could hardly have been better and the cast was solid. I liked Evie's relationship with her best friend, and Evie and Walt had excellent chemistry. Evie's gold and crimson evening gowns were lovely. Given that the gowns progressed from a beautiful gold gown to a stunning crimson one, I was expecting something really fantastic for her wedding gown, but it was merely pretty and interesting.

And if you ever find yourself in an opulent manor with old money, murder-y occupants, make sure you're not a maid, especially a nameless one hired for the occasion.
posted by orange swan at 11:35 AM on January 8, 2023

I think the vampire thing was so obvious that I was expecting it to be...not that? Like I usually love vampires, but it all fell flat for me here.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:33 PM on January 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think the idea of it as a tween intro to horror is a good one. Nothing new, but hits classic tropes in a not-too-gory way. Me, I was sufficiently bored that we turned it off after the "bachelorette party" turned out to be G-rated. (I don't require either gore or hot lesbian vampire sex, but you gotta give me something to chew on. The only distinctive scene was the "spa day" one.)
posted by praemunire at 9:27 PM on January 11, 2023