Mark Reviews Movies: THE INVITATION (2022)

The Invitation, Sony Pictures Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 26, 2022

There's a lot to be said about the final 30 minutes or so of The Invitation, which goes to show that screenwriters should probably lead with their best idea instead of saving it as something of a surprise for the third act. It's not that screenwriter Blair Butler and director Jessica M. Thompson are trying to hide the truth of what's happening in this English manor, where maids are numbered, volunteered to explore the darkest spaces of the estate, and attacked by some shadowy presence with glowing eyes and fingers like claws.

That's the significant frustration with this narrative: It wants to hint and tease at the ultimate revelation of this story, as if the filmmakers fear that build-up to and mystery of it aren't particularly interesting. Those fears would be correct.

The prologue more or less gives away the game, anyway, as a woman locked in a room in said mansion escapes her prison, only to die by suicide instead of staying in this place. This is a horror story from the outset, and Butler has a particular and famous horror tale in mind to serve as the inspiration for this situation and these characters.

There's a real "ah-ha" moment when all of that clicks into place, because we realize we're watching something of an unofficial sequel to or alternate fictional history of that story. Imagine if that feeling had come at the start instead of the third act, as well as how the filmmakers could have played with our knowledge of that tale and the ways in which they have changed it.

Instead, though, we get a movie that just keeps teasing us with the possibility that something of interest might eventually happen. Our protagonist is Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel), an American woman who works in catering, has some ambition to become a ceramics artist, and is grieving the death of her mother several months ago.

While working an event for a DNA testing company, Evie ends up with one of those tests and decides to find out her ancestry. It was the mother's dream to re-connect with the English side of her family, and soon enough, Evie discovers that she has a second cousin named Oliver (Hugh Skinner). He's from a wealthy family and just happens to be visiting New York City from his home in London.

The two meet at a restaurant, and Oliver fills in Evie on the family gossip: Her aristocratic great-grandmother had an affair with a footman, which is how Evie's immediate family line was disconnected from Oliver's. The cousin invites her to a forthcoming wedding in England, being held at the estate of an inordinately rich lord. After some convincing, Evie agrees to attend the celebration as a kind of belated family reunion (Her cautious friend, played by Courtney Taylor, at least lets us know Evie isn't naïve about how all of this seems too good to be true). Said lord, by the way, is Walt (Thomas Doherty), who takes an immediate interest in Evie, and the attraction is mutual.

The rest of Evie's trip doesn't go much of anywhere, since the family is welcoming and accommodating, while the romance with the lord never quite feels romantic (It's odd that two very attractive and charming people can have such little chemistry together). Meanwhile, the occasional scenes of those maids cleaning the library or hunting for a certain bottle in a poorly lit wine cellar remind us that the real meat of this tale is being hidden from us (much in the same way that the oppressive darkness of those scenes prevents any kind of suspense, setups, or payoffs to function). There are touches of class conflict and racial prejudice here, but most of that comes from Viktoria (Stephanie Corneliussen), one of—along with Lucy (Alana Boden), whose name might ring a bell, especially when the movie finally tells us what's really happening—the maids of honor to the strangely absent bride. Mostly, though, this is a game of waiting for the inevitable.

That the inevitable revelation does somewhat surprise, both because of how well Thompson plays with a claustrophobic sense of helplessness (A scene with a casket epitomizes that) and because of the growing awareness of the specific reference point Butler is using. The movie comes to sudden, eerie, and somewhat clever life. However, the effect is so relatively brief and left so underdeveloped that The Invitation mostly exists as a lost opportunity, undone by the filmmakers' hesitation to be upfront with its most promising idea.

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