The Invitation at SLIFF 2015: No Rules of Etiquette for This Dinner Party

In the opening of the enigmatic thriller The Invitation, Los Angeles couple Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and Kira (Mayatzy Corinealdi) hit a coyote with their car while en route to a dinner party. This accident is something of a morbid non sequitur, but it adds a dose of uncanniness to a film that oozes with such atmosphere. The aforementioned dinner occurs at the luxurious canyon home of Will’s ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman). The smiling, overly-familiar couple have summoned a small group of friends for an evening of food, drinks, and, as it turns out, cult indoctrination. It seems that Eden and David have immersed themselves in a popular Hollywood pseudo-religious movement, one which Eden insists has been crucial to overcoming her sorrows. The hosts are unfailingly warm and polite, but the wine-lubricated bait-and-switch they pull on their guests is just the start of a night rife with escalating creepiness.

The Invitation is a formally stylish film, characterized by copious flashbacks, cunning sound design, and fantastically photographed spaces. However, screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi follow a naturalistic yet somewhat over-written approach with the dialog, and as such it takes some time to clarify the characters’ relationships and the tragedy that splintered Will and Eden’s marriage. That said, director Karyn Kusama excels at establishing a dizzyingly ambiguous tone, utilizing everything from performers’ individual strengths to the house’s strangely sinister modernist spaces. Until the film’s final scenes, it’s unclear whether Will’s mounting, prickly paranoia is justified, or just the symptom of a grief-stricken breakdown. What truly unsettles about The Invitation, however, is how acidly skeptical it ultimately proves to be regarding belief systems that focus on the next world to the detriment of this one. It’s a critique epitomized by the film’s superlative, nightmarish final shot.

The Invitation screens Sunday, November 8 at 9:30 p.m. at the Landmark Tivoli Theater. For tickets or additional information, visit the Cinema St. Louis website.

Full Disclosure: Andrew Wyatt is serving as a juror for the New Filmmakers Forum’s (NFF) Emerging Director Award at the Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival.