“…deserved very little of the praise it received.”

Last night I watched The Invitation, and after all of the praise that the movie has gotten I found it kind of disappointing. The Invitation is a movie about a group of friends who, after not hearing from one of the members of said group for two years, get a mysterious invitation in the mail to get together for a dinner party. When they arrive they start to hear stories of ‘the invitation’, a group that is totally not a cult that helps you remove pain from your life. This is fine for everyone except for Will, who thinks that there is more going on than what is being seen.

The Invitation was a very interesting movie to watch. A lot of the film relies heavily on emotional dialogue given by one or two characters, and these actors knocked that out of the park. Logan Marshall-Green, who played Will, gave an absolutely amazing performance really tapping into the deeply-set emotional issues that his characters has. And it’s not only the performances, but also the atmosphere of the film that was amazing. The direction in The Invitation always managed to keep you on the edge of your seat, just revealing enough so as to keep you guessing what is not being shown; and even the score was great. The shrill string music really upped the tension throughout the entirety of the film and added to the unsettling feeling that The Invitation was going for. But unfortunately The Invitation had one major thing working against it: It is boring as hell.

Nothing fucking happens in this movie for at least 80% of the runtime. I don’t want to spoil anything, so if you have yet to see The Invitation and are interested, I’d stop reading here. The entirety of this movie is comprised of a man essentially shouting “I’m not crazy, you’re crazy” and trying to ruin a fun dinner party. This gets really annoying after a while because the movie keeps trying to misdirect you to get you in the mindset of the character in question. This would have been fine had the film not then fulfilled the prophecy and made this character correct. And this portion of the movie, while intense, is pretty bland. It does nothing that we haven’t seen before and relies solely on you being scared. The only thing that came close to saving this movie for me was the very end, but even that wasn’t good enough to salvage what I found to be a pretty boring affair.

Overall The Invitation is a movie that deserved very little of the praise it received. The entire film rests on twists that are supposed to confuse the audience and put them in the mindset of the main character, but then all of that becomes moot when the climax comes along. I will admit that the performances are great and the the direction and score were beautiful, but in all The Invitation was really boring.

I give The Invitation a C