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The Invitation - Spoiler Review

 The Invitation was a movie that kinda' came out of left-field for me. I had heard nothing about it, seen nothing about it, which is semi-unusual for a film with a theatrical release at least. None-the-less, tickets were discounted, so my fiancé and I went to see it. I love horror, this was apparently a horror/thriller. Could be good. From here on, spoilers.

Photo by University of Maine

The movie by its-self wasn't actually terrible; I've easily seen much worse. Having said that, if it wasn't discounted, I would not have gone to the theatre for it. Easily could have been a direct-to-home release. The main issue the movie had in my opinion, was that it was distinctively cut into three sections, and not like beginning, middle and end. What I mean is the first half hour of the movie is dedicated to learning the characters and presenting what appears to be a ghost story of sorts. I like haunting movies and stories, so I was interested. The second-third of the movie was this over the top love story between the owner of the mansion and his new found "friend" that was conveniently a cousin of one of his friends. And I mean, like a rom-com almost. Yes there was a scene or two with jump scares, but overall this portion of the movie is about them falling in love. Then the last 20 minutes of the movie is dedicated to the "big twist" (that wasn't a twist at all, but either way here we are), where the man that the lead lady has fallen in love with is actually an ancient Vampire that wants to take her as his third bride. The real issue is the movie has a distinct identity crisis; is it a ghost film, a love story or a Vampire movie? It's terrible at all three together, and I feel like if it had just picked one, the movie could have been great. Let's explain a bit. 

Photo by IndieWire

The way the mansion is shown and setup in the initial few minutes of the movie builds a great haunting or ghost story. You get a bit of mystery at the beginning as a lady runs in terror and feeling she had no other way out, she dies by suicide. Tragic and haunting to start a movie off with. Then the love story starts as the lead lady is conveniently whisked off to England. once she arrives, she meets Walt, the owner of the mansion, and so begins the rags to riches typical love story. He wine's and dines her. He's charming, good looking and makes her feel at home. You get a great sense that they actually may be falling in love. Then in the last 20 minutes of the movie, the production company realized they actually had to end this somehow, and decided that Walt was actually a Vampire all along and needed her (for...reasons?) to be his bride. The Vampire thing is thrown in so abruptly, and intentionally that it's supposed to get the "Gasp! Oh my god" moment from the crowd, but, if the crowd is observant at all, then they picked up on all the heavy handed foreshadowing that was done during the movie. And I mean heavy handed. There's a scene where the lead cuts her finger and one of the Vampresses can't help herself but to suck on her finger. It was a weird scene because it was out of character for the woman to do this out of nowhere. It also involves that same woman being randomly naked while all the other women in the room are fully clothed, and no one seems to notice at all. 

Photo by HeyUGuys

I actually like Vampire movies, so I'm not ripping on it for the sheer fact that it was one. It's that, well, the Vampire aspect almost didn't matter at all. The plot of the Vampire stuff was so thin that you blink and you miss it. They don't iterate almost at all what mythos of Vampire we're dealing with either except for a 10 second dialogue of "Oh don't worry, you can go in the sun, we're actually very different then the legends say". I'm paraphrasing, but that was about it. Someone in passing tells the lead to kill them with fire, beheading or a stake. The ending was really thrown together so fast and messy that it made me almost laugh out loud. Also, there's a scene where one of the female vampires attacks another one and they end up impaling themselves together with a steel spear from a statue. Somehow, this kills them even though it's not through the heart nor was it wooden. But then, I suppose they didn't explain how any of this works anyways, so maybe it's a thing in their world building. 

Photo by CBR

Bottom line, skip this at the theatre at least. Watch it at home or someone else's. Don't pay for it if you can help it. Even hard chunks in your mashed potatoes instead of them being silky smooth, well this was as if they didn't mash them at all and still asked you to butter and eat them.


Overall score: 3 out of 10 stars

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