The Invitation is scary at first but loses its thrill
SPOILERS AHEAD
“The Invitation” was directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. This film was in theaters on April 8, 2016, and made $231,703 at the box office.
The runtime of this film is 100 minutes and the studio who produced the film was Drafthouse Films.
The film is based on a man who visits his ex-wife’s dinner party in the evening in Hollywood Hills, California. As the film progresses we get a sense of paranoia and mystery as haunting dark experiences unfold towards the guests and our main protagonist. The suspenseful story of the film brings that suspension of paranoia and mystery.
It starts off with the main protagonist and a woman visiting a home of his ex-wife house in the evening. The thriller goes off with a message of an invitation to meet new friends and to reunite old friends in a dinner party.
As the thriller continues the main protagonist is feeling suspicious toward the guests and his ex-wife. They show random scenes from the film of people screaming blank out of nowhere.
Which that means the director muted their voices to add tension to the audience. The guests begin to feel concern with our main pragmatist stating that his self-destructive feelings have clouded his mind with paranoia.
He begins to say that something is not right, and he doesn’t know why his ex-wife invites him to a dinner party. Towards the end of the thriller, the music begins to turn dark, and loud as random scenes of characters are screaming blank out of nowhere. The thriller ends with a woman sobbing in tears hidden in the kitchen.
The film begins to feel more paranoid towards the climax of the film. In the beginning, it wasn’t too scary, and it was boring until we got to the climax. In the climax, the main protagonist started to argue with his ex-wife stating, “There is something strange going on here and no one is saying anything” Michiel Huisman stated.
In this same scene, the main protagonist goes into a dark room watching a video on his laptop. When a knock came out of nowhere of a guest requesting him to go back to the table. This part of the film began to turn scary and the music was getting quiet.
As he was sitting down at the table everybody was doing a prayer with their wine glasses in the air. As all of them were about to drink the wine the main protagonist slammed and broke the wine glasses stating, “Do not drink this wine” Huisman stated.
He urgently told his girlfriend that they are leaving home causing his ex-wife to become angry. She started to say some incohesive words and lashed out at our main protagonist. As he was trying to get his ex-wife off him he pushed a random female character against a wall.
The random female smacks her head on an unknown object and started to have a seizure. As everyone was freaking out they tried to call 911 on their cell phones. But their phones were not receiving service and someone purposely locked all the doors within the house.
Now the scary part comes in. As everybody was freaking out, their voices were muted. Again, the director wanted to add tension to this scene, which I can say it is bit cliche repeating the same elements when he can use different ones.
The man who is the new husband of the main protagonist’s ex-wife was holding a gun and began to shoot at one guest, which the protagonist, his girlfriends, and another character hide for safety. From this point, the protagonist and his girlfriend knew that his ex-wife and her husband were attempting to poison everyone and to kill anyone who dares to escape the home
At the end of the film, the protagonist and his girlfriend killed the ex-wife and the man. The ending, however, was not a happy ending as the protagonist and his girlfriend was outside at midnight viewing the hills of Hollywood. The film turns into a dark ending of multiple police officers trying to save other houses attempting to do the same actions on what ex-wife and man were doing to the guests.
The film wasn’t too bad, but it needed to fix so many things.
The first thing: they should have removed the muted voice and allowed the characters to scream in terror. Adding that to the film adds an element of horror and it gives a jump to the audience.
The second thing I would change in the film would be the bright light key tones. Seriously, it was impossible to watch this film at full brightness on my laptop. Some scenes in the film were too dark and hard for me to watch the film.
The last thing I would change would be the ending of the film. Why did the director think it was a good idea to have multiple police officers saving different homes? This ending was confusing and I was expecting a happy ending for the characters who survived.
