THE INVITATION 2015, dir. Karyn Kusama
Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) are a couple who’ve been invited to a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills. The hosts are Will’s ex, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), and her new beau, David (Michiel Huisman), and the event is a reunion of sorts between them and their extended group of friends. There’s tension right off the bat, both due to the history between Will and Eden and a seemingly-traumatic event that no one seems to want to directly address. Eden and David bring out a pair of new friends that they met while on a retreat in Mexico; one is a feisty, barefooted young lady (Lindsay Burdge) that lives with them, and the other is a stocky, older gentleman with a soft-spoken demeanor (John Carroll Lynch). The group drinks expensive wine and even does some cocaine before Eden and David reveal the true nature of their jaunt in Mexico: they’ve joined a group called “The Invitation,” focused on eradicating the guilt and pain of past trauma from one’s life, and show a bizarre, haunting video touting its teachings. While the couple insists that it’s not a cult, merely a philosophy, Will grows increasingly alienated and suspicious, and certain things he sees around the house don’t seem to add up. And why are they keeping all the doors locked?
Karyn Kusama’s film is a sort of a horror-infused take on THE BIG CHILL, focusing on a reunion between old friends in a single location but amping up the tension and pathos until it all hits a breaking point. The film wisely takes Will’s perspective, and we are right there with him as he notices just enough to keep him unsettled while still very much leaving the possibility open that he’s being paranoid, nosy, or just plain bitter. The house of the dinner party is a very upscale Hollywood home, and Will makes it very clear that it’s all Eden’s money, and that she left him for a successful record producer, so there's already reason for him not to trust either of them. Plus, it’s obvious he’s still getting over whatever broke them up, and everyone else is fully aware that his perception of the situation is almost certainly skewed.
This tension comprises the bulk of the film, and it did a very good job of sucking me in and putting me on the edge of my seat. There are a couple of sequences, including a phenomenal monologue by Lynch, where I was genuinely fascinated at where things were going, and couldn’t think of an easy narrative solution to what was going on.
The sense of “What the fuck is going on?” eventually reaches a boiling point, and unfortunately, the payoff didn’t quite work on me as well as the setup. There’s a scene about 2/3rds in that says, very concisely and definitively, “This is what the rest of the movie is,” and absolutely nothing happens from then on to challenge that. A twist ending ties more into the notion of cults and their historical association with the Hollywood Hills more than it does with any of the characters or their arcs.
Both the core problem and the film's greatest attribute is that, for once, the drama is actually working in tandem with the “horror”. The film, like THE FINAL GIRLS, is all about getting over the tragedies that threaten to define our lives, but unlike that tonal misfire, the characters’ history and the literal threat are directly linked, and the whole film is an extension of that grief. So when the question of, “How does one deal with a wound that refuses to heal?” gives way to, “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!” it sorta feels like a loss. Will is not as distressed that David and Eden have been brainwashed by The Invitation, nor about the more bizarre aspects of the dinner party, as much as by the idea that Eden has somehow spared herself from the pain that still plagues him. He cannot fathom how she’s able to sashay around, all smiles and pleasantries, while he is very much haunted by what had happened to them when they were together. How dare she move on with her life!
Another fault of the film is that, despite the writers’ comments to the contrary in the post-film Q & A, the supporting characters are all thinly defined. Like the excellent A BEAUTIFUL NOW, the story is so personal and focused on one character that his/her friends end up coming off as broad sketches. There’s the overweight, married schlub, there’s the handsome L.A. gay couple, there’s the bouncy Asian-American chick with the slutty past, etc. Even Kira (bonus points for making her not-white, even if the only Asian characters happen to be a couple) ends up being the flat, supportive girlfriend, who's oddly unphased at the lingering feelings between Will and Eden and by Will’s hurtful, relationship-ending outbursts. The most interesting side characters are the ones played by Lynch and Burdge, specifically because the enigma of their personalities is intentional. It also helps that their performances are pitch-perfect; Lynch uses his natural, everyman sense of kindness to optimal effect, and Burdge, who’s quickly becoming one of my favorite indie actresses, is a ball of feral energy as the biggest wild card of the dinner party.
I only knew Logan Marshall-Green from PROMETHEUS and COLD COMES THE NIGHT, and did not care for his work in either film at all. Here, bearded and near-unrecognizable, he completely reversed my opinion of his talents; he is your “in” to the story, and you have to experience this dinner party through his eyes. Will causes so much drama right off the bat that you could easily wonder why he’s literally being a party-pooper, but you can plainly see in Marshall-Green’s eyes the inner conflict between playing nice for his friends and the fearful confusion as to what his ex and her new man are actually up to. One scene where he lays a biting “Where the fuck is Choi?” at his hosts is one of those aforementioned beats where I couldn’t help but smile at the intensity of the situation, and he and Burdge make a darkly-lit poolside flirtation sing even though it has little to do with the narrative. A film like this, which primarily takes place in one location and is rife with dialogue, depends heavily on its writing and its cast, and both are elevated by Marshall-Green’s work.
It’s hard to separate the feeling of anticlimax from the distinct memory of being fully captivated by the setup, but I can’t deny that Kusama and writers Phil Hay (her husband) and Matt Manfredi had me completely for the first hour of the film, and maybe that’s enough. It’s not like the ending completely fucked the dog or anything; in fact, there were big screams and applause all throughout the final act from the rest of the audience, and I suppose that it fits logically with what came before it. But there’s no question that simply watching this group of old friends drink expensive wine, gorge on food, and reminisce while Will gets increasingly paranoid and fearful was much more satisfying to me than anything in the back third of the film, with its more literal, typical conflict. Still, the film has a lot going for it, and the greatest compliment I could give it is probably this: though a lot of thriller/horror films try and tie in a real, tangible sense of drama and pathos with the shocks and scares, this is one of the few ones I’ve seen where the link is not only organic, but serves as the driving engine for the film without ever seeming forced, tacky, or contrived. In short, this is a horror movie where I liked the drama better than the horror; not many of those around.
