Studio: Drafthouse Films
Director:    Karyn Kusama
Writer: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi
Producer:  Martha Griffin, Matt Manfredi, Phil Hay, Nick Spicer
Stars:     Logan Marshall-Green, Tammy Blanchard, Michiel Huisman, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Lindsay Burdge, Mike Doyle, Jay Larson, Michelle Krusiec, Karl Yune, Jordi Vilasuso, Marieh Delfino, Toby Huss, John Carroll Lynch

Review Score:

Summary:

A man suspects his ex-wife and her new husband may have devilish plans in store for their unsuspecting dinner party guests.

Synopsis:

Will drives with his new girlfriend Kira to the Hollywood Hills home of his ex-wife Eden, who is hosting a dinner party with her new husband David. Will and Eden divorced while trying to cope with their young son Ty’s accidental death. Eden then met David at a grief support group and their party will be the first time any of their friends have seen the couple in over two years. On the way to the house, Will hits a coyote and is forced to club it to death with a tire iron to end the animal’s misery.

Will and Kira arrive. David and Eden’s other dinner guests include Tommy and his boyfriend Miguel, Ben, Claire, and Gina. Gina mentions that their other friend Choi is running late. Eden introduces Sadie, a girl she and David met while in Mexico who now stays with them.

Throughout the evening, Will wanders his former home alone and relives memories related to Ty’s death. Will goes for water and remembers Eden attempting suicide. In the kitchen, Will witnesses Eden slapping Ben when he makes a joke about her New Age ideas on expelling pain.

Eden and David’s mysterious friend Pruitt arrives. Will notices that David locked the front door. Will later goes for firewood and spies Eden hiding a pill bottle through her bedroom window.

David and Eden tell their guests about a group they joined along with Pruitt and Sadie called “The Invitation” to work through grief using spiritual philosophy. David shows everyone a video in which cult leader Dr. Joseph comforts a terminally ill woman through the process of suicide.

David answers a knock at the front door, but turns away the unseen visitors, explaining to his guests that they were strangers looking for a party nearby. The guests then play a game of “I Want” during which Eden kisses Ben and Pruitt confesses to accidentally killing his wife Margaret.

Uncomfortable with the mood, Claire makes a move to leave. David tries convincing her to stay, causing Will to suspect that David is purposefully attempting to keep everyone inside the house. David relents and Claire leaves. However, Pruitt mentions that he is blocking her car and accompanies Claire outside. Will watches as Pruitt stops Claire just out of sight to say something to her before she drives off, but David pulls Will away and confronts him about his suspicions. (In a deleted scene, Pruitt kills Claire.)

During dinner, Will internally reflects on Ty’s death again. While walking through a hallway, Will spies Sadie making odd faces into a mirror. The two of them later have a strange poolside conversation. Will then has a separate discussion with Tommy about the odd atmosphere in the house.

Will finally receives a cellphone signal and finds a voicemail from Choi indicating that Choi was actually at David and Eden’s doorstep earlier than any other party guests, preparing to enter. Presuming that David and Eden must have done something to Choi, Will confronts the couple about their apparent cult brainwashing in front of the other guests. Choi then enters unexpectedly, explaining that he was called away by work before he had a chance to come inside earlier. Will is embarrassed over the scene he created, but the others assume his residual grief over Ty’s death is causing Will to behave irrationally.

Will finds a laptop with more clues about “The Invitation” and their true motivations. Will is called back to the table where David pours everyone an after dinner drink. Suspicious that they are about to be poisoned as part of a group suicide ritual, Will smashes the glasses, but not before Gina drinks. Angry that he has ruined their plan, Sadie attacks Will, who inadvertently knocks her unconscious in the ensuing physical confrontation.

Gina collapses and begins frothing at the mouth, proving that the drinks really were poisoned. David pulls a gun and shoots Miguel as he attempts CPR. Pruitt takes the gun from David and shoots Choi. Eden starts slashing with a knife. David stabs Ben. Pruitt finishes off Ben with a gunshot.

The remaining guests flee and hide throughout the large house. Will overhears David reminding Eden that what they are doing is the only way they can leave the earth and be freed from their pain. Will retrieves a fireplace poker from Sadie while she lies dying.

Pruitt finds Will and Kira trying to hide from him. The two of them are able to overpower Pruitt before Kira finally beats him to death. Eden suddenly shoots Will before turning the gun on herself and firing into her own stomach.

Tommy is revealed to be still alive and in hiding. Tommy stabs David and kills him.

Dying slowly, Eden asks for Will to come to her in her final moments. Will, Kira, and Tommy take Eden outside. There, the survivors notice the helicopters overhead. Holding hands with Kira, Will also notices numerous hillside homes lit with red lanterns similar to the one David lit earlier in the evening. Will realizes that Los Angeles is erupting in chaos as other cult members throughout the city carry out plans similar to David and Eden’s.

Review:

It’s been two years since Eden was last seen by anyone, including her ex-husband Will. The tragic death of their young son Ty not only drove a divisive wedge into their marriage, it drove Eden to attempt suicide in grisly fashion. However, the couple’s eventual spilt was amicable enough that Will and his new girlfriend Kira now find themselves as invitees to a homecoming celebration of sorts. Eden and her new husband David are finally ready to resurface in Los Angeles by opening their home and reconnecting with the friends Eden left behind.

Returning to a house haunted by painful memories is uncomfortable for Will, but what takes place once the party is underway truly shakes his senses. Eden and David have a peculiar houseguest named Sadie, and an even more peculiar new friend named Pruitt. The unlikely foursome met as members of The Invitation, a fringe philosophy group dedicated to counseling broken people through grief and suffering. The New Age mindset appears to have worked too, as Eden has not beamed from a smile this bright since before despair destroyed her life. Still, Will wonders if that uneasy smile might hide sinister intentions.

As laughter and wine are shared amongst the partygoers, seemingly harmless moments shape into shadowy clues fueling Will’s unshakable suspicion that all may not be what it seems. Is Will’s own fractured mind spiraling into hysteria or do Eden and David have devious plans in store for their unsuspecting dinner guests?

Constructed around a foundation of anticipation, Karyn Kusama’s exceptional thriller “The Invitation” epitomizes the concept of “slow burn.” You won’t find fast gratification here. Like the uncertain intentions of possibly deceitful party hosts, the horror remains hidden, yet always bubbling furiously beneath the surface and aching to burst without warning. Suspense is built on whispers, shadows, nuance, mood, and movements in the background. “The Invitation” gradually unfolds in a space where every innocuous action, glance, and word teases duplicitous motives while bathing the scenery in an unsettling atmosphere of dread, doubt, and impending doom.

The film's ability to weave its hypnotic web begins with a fantastic ensemble cast. Eden and David's dinner party is populated by a robust roster of a dozen guests, which initially feels overweight, yet every one of them becomes integral to the plot's movement. No one is underused, no one is unimportant, and everyone provides a purpose. Characters are also diverse. For instance, Will is in an interracial relationship and one of the core couples is gay, though it never reads as stunt casting for the sake of fulfilling a phantom quota. These are just the best actors for the roles.

Tammy Blanchard shines as Eden. The perfect pout on her face simultaneously suggests beauty, conviction, fragility, and lost hope, which is precisely required to convey Eden’s complicated emotional arc. And whether it is Arthur Leigh Allen in David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” Twisty the Clown on “American Horror Story,” or even Drew Carey’s cross-dressing brother, no one plays dual identity roles quite like John Carroll Lynch. His inherent ability to portray the friendly Everyman who masks a dark side alter ego gives mild-mannered Pruitt an edge of steel-trap danger warning Will and the audience to always be on alert.

Falling under the film’s spell requires being driven by a desire to learn what really lurks underneath each odd gesture and possibly insidious stare. “The Invitation” takes cues from the very best of 1970s paranoid thrillers, including “Rosemary’s Baby” (review here). Imagining the motivations behind how everyone looks at one another while slowly creeping through Eden’s dimly lit house brings to mind the same styling Roman Polanski used when Rosemary’s inner wheels were spinning, but secret truths were always just out of earshot or concealed around corners.

If the script has a weak point, it is that it occasionally cheats to keep the validity of David’s suspicions submerged in ambiguity. Timing of certain beats such as the revelation explaining a certain guest’s untimely arrival are more than a smidge convenient. However, “The Invitation” nevertheless capitalizes on these setups, natural and manufactured, in a manner that makes the journey as quietly compelling as the destination is feverishly explosive.

Tightly wound and tightly executed, “The Invitation” is a nerve-rattling experience about how grief makes us susceptible to seduction and how misguided beliefs can corrupt human behavior. With a devilish ending you are certain to bring home with you, “The Invitation” encapsulates cinematic suspense excellence from the first frame to the last. This is how “slow burn” takes an intentionally torturous wick to a violently erupting conclusion with true efficiency and exhilarating effectiveness.

Review Score: 95