by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
As someone who prides themselves on generally having a good sense of what looks good to me, I went into The Invitation with a lot of concerns.
Sure, the story about Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) being brought to England under the guise of a long-lost family connection, only to be caught in the vampiric nightmare could be reminiscent of the surprise that was Ready or Not, but that was literally the only hope I was holding out for it. Not exactly the highest bar. Though there is also the fact that it’s brought to us by Sony, who showed they really know what makes a proper vampire flick with the release of Morbius earlier this year, at least if Twitter is to be believed. And when has social media ever lied to us before?
More concerning was the long list of potential pitfalls I saw while being constantly bombarded with the trailer:
Yes, the cinematic calendar is still out of whack, but I still don’t trust a late August release.
Particularly when your trailer shows basically your entire film. BIG red flag making me think the studio has ABSOLUTELY no faith in what they’re putting out.
Oh, the mysterious bad boy’s last name is DeVille (Thomas Doherty)? That surname clever when I watched 101 Dalmatians when I was a child.
Her name is Evie? How biblical.
Oh, you’ve got a Harker, too? Because you’re a vampire film? How cheeky.
But could The Invitation rise above the flashing warning lights and be self-aware enough to be a fun time? OF COURSE NOT! All the signs were right there!
I hear what you’re saying: “But Jake, look at what you were going in expecting! You were setting this movie up to fail!” Fine. Look, I tried to go into this with the lowest of expectations and was immediately forced to abandon all hope when it starts things off with a cliched jump scare (and trigger warning research might not be a bad move for some). Our cold open proved to be unfortunately prophetic, as the rest of what follows is nothing but a collection of the worst of what PG-13 horror has to offer, complete with useless jump scares, neutered kills, and a plethora of cutaways to disembodied screams. It’s quite telling that a promotional tweet I saw for the film numerous times, “Once you accept The Invitation your fate is already sealed,” conveyed a greater sense of foreboding than anything I saw onscreen.
Our two leads, one of whom is supposed to be immediately enchanted by the other, have little chemistry, if any. I don’t really put much of any of this at the feet of the performers. It’s hard to do much with a script filled with nothing but trite dialogue. I mean, to give you a small nibble of what kind of writing we’re dealing with, the genetic service Evie uses to find her unfortunate family connections? Find Yourself. Ugh.
At 104 minutes, you might think it’s at least a small mercy that the film clocks in at under two hours. However, I was horrified when I first dared glance at the time to discover that merely half the runtime had elapsed. So, as I spent the last hour saying to myself, “Well, at least it’s not making me angry,” I ruminated on the life choices that had led me to the seat I was currently sitting in (along with the only other poor sap who had the misfortune of paying for a ticket).
“But Jake,” you ask one final time, for some reason desperate to glean some kind of hope from this experience, “Isn’t there any semblance of the Ready or Not ray of hope that gave you the false sense that this might have something worthwhile to offer?” Oh, they try. With, like, 10 minutes left. At that point, your only rooting interest is for the credits to roll so you can go out and purchase the makings of a drink you’ll need to mix yourself for when you stab at the keys of your laptop, eager to not have to give this another thought as soon as humanly possible.
My final advice? Kill this thing with fire before it sucks two hours of your life away that you can’t get back.
Score: 3/10
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