The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2016)

[Lost Highway]

The Invitation is the new film by Karyn Kusama who made a splash with Girlfight in 2000 only to then fall foul of the Hollywood machine when she had an unhappy experience with the live action adaptation of the MTV Aeon Flux cartoons. She then directed Jennifer's Body from a Diabolo Cody script which wasn't well received but which is actually not bad and she's since mostly worked in television, like so many former indie directors. In any case, after her latest film I hope it won't take her too long to get another project off the ground.

The Invitation may be my favourite American film of the year so far and it seems to be mostly getting great reviews. It's a worthy addition to the dinner-party-from-hell genre. A couple invite their friends round after they've been away for two years at a new age retreat in Mexico. The woman has also invited her ex-husband (and his new partner) from whom she split after a tragedy. It appears things are still unresolved and the evening gets tense as the ex-husband can't shake the feeling that something is off about his ex-wife and her new husband.

The film is a slow burn but it's none the worse for it as the first hour is entirely about accumulating detail and growing paranoia. I liked its underlying observation about how certain new age beliefs deny its followers negative if necessary emotions like pain and grief via superficial, spiritual uplift. In the beginning I found the direction a little mannered but once I realised where it is going, the approach made sense. As films confined to one location go, this is very cinematic, with a great score and sound design. It reminded me a little of Polanski, both of the early paranoid thrillers like Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant and the fluid camera work of his later theatrical adaptations. The film ends on a great last shot, which may just push it into a different genre.

The trailer doesn't give too much of the game away and there are misdirections, though I'm glad I went in cold:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wcFaLtnx43w" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[zedz]

It's nearly a year ago that I saw this. I don't know why this took so long to get a commercial release.

It's a good slow chiller, and the less you know about the plot going in the better. The character writing is little more than functional and the performances are inconsistent, but this film is more about mood and tension, and the claustrophobic exploration of a limited set. It smartly predicates its anxiety on the real-world dilemma of 'what do you do when a dinner party / semi-formal social gathering goes bad?' At what point do all those false smiles and general awkwardness become sinister?

(And the final shot is indeed fantastic).

[colinr0380]

In any case, after her latest film I hope it won't take her too long to get another project off the ground.

It looks like you will not have to wait too long, as she is going to be one of the all-female line up of directors of the horror anthology film XX.

[warren oates]

I was very underwhelmed by The Invitation which feels like it was worth seeing only and exactly once, after which I will never think of it again. I was excited to watch this based on the Drafthouse imprimatur, the positive reviews and the recommendations above, but the whole thing felt very facile to me. It's far better directed than it is written. But the writing/storytelling lacks depth, purpose, dramatic and thematic density and integrity even if you take it solely on its own terms as a genre piece. Some of the very best American independent films I've seen in the past few years have been low and no budget thrillers and horror films. And, while I was watching The Invitation, I couldn't stop thinking about how much more compelling and interesting so many of those were. The mood was intermittently menacing but I never felt much of the tension others seem to be talking about. The Invitation has far less to say than it pretends to about any of its characters or about

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cults or self-help or the New Age or Los Angeles or midlife crises or grief

And once the slow burn peters out into midling action, things unfold quite predictably. I think the way in which the characters behave as if they are somehow physically trapped would have annoyed me even if I didn't live in Los Angeles, but there must be a half dozen obvious routes out of that house (and the many like it I've been inside) that, once the shit hits the fan, everyone suddenly pretends not to know about. Props to the writers for at least skewering the always unintentionally hilarious Oriah Mountain Dreamer's most famous work in their title.

[Lost Highway]

I don't think the film thinks it's saying that much about New Age age beliefs or grief, that's why I referred to an underlying observation rather than a theme or a message. The Invitation is primarily an exercise in genre and style.

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However I liked that the New Age angle is the motor for the thriller/horror elements (similar to and far superior to Ti West's The Sacrament in that regard) and unlike with so many other thrillers or horror films the loss of a child isn't merely there to set up the lead character's redemption arc, it is what drives the plot.

I don't understand the complaint that the characters "behave" like they are trapped.

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Half of them get killed before or as soon as they figure out that something is wrong and the survivors who can't get out really are trapped because the house has been modified to keep them inside (bars on windows, doors not where they should be) or their escape route is blocked by the killers. I also liked that this is the rare horror film where the survivors do the sensible thing in crucial moments, like attack the killers when they have the chance or take their weapon when the killers are down instead of cheating by having the characters act like idiots. I liked late on character details, liked the ex-wife who was the one to instigate the mass killing, going off the whole plan when it turns from the "serene" poisoning as planned (her idea of a beautiful death) to a bloody Manson-style massacre and goes into shock herself.

I agree that the film is better directed than written but that's the case for a lot of good genre films and I didn't think it was poorly written. The horror film is always more of a director's than a writer's showcase. Whether the film works for you as a thriller/horror film or whether the climax is exciting is a matter of temperament and taste. It worked for me after the growing sense of unease was so well orchestrated.

The question of taste also goes for the many other low budget genre films which apparently are better and which you fail to mention. A few which I thought were as good or better are It Follows, Under the Skin, Upstream Color, The Innkeepers, Sound of My Voice and You're Next but that's over a period of five years. I haven't seen much low budget genre work recently I liked as much or more than The Invitation and if you'd recommend some, it would be appreciated.

[warren oates]

Sorry for the late reply. I was in the middle of a much longer and more detailed response, which I could swear I had saved as a draft...But apparently the Internet ate my homework. The good news is that in the interim I managed to do even more homework.

First, to answer your specific questions about the film.

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I do still feel like the film is cheating, both with the conceit of the house being some kind of fortress and with the full layout. We see the bars on the lower windows and the locked front door. But we also see a huge open backyard abutting a hillside and a wall of sliding glass doors/windows (not too hard to shatter) on one whole side of the house. The detail of the door that was there and now, suddenly, wasn't would make more sense if 1) it had been set up better and/or 2) the house weren't actually an airy open plan typical mid-century dwelling where the idea is that nearly every space has some opening to the outdoors. There are just too many easy ways out, especially from the upstairs. And the director herself emphasizes this early on with a shot of that expansive back wall of glass facing the yard.

You may not think the film is saying much about New Age beliefs or grief but the filmmakers sure do and here's the evidence, an interview with the Q&A's Jeff Goldsmith, wherein both writers and the director not only spend the vast majority of their time discussing themes, ideas and character, but they also -- threw up in my throat a little, sorry -- compare their work to Michael Haneke's.

When I go to see a genre film nowadays, or any film, really, I'm constantly asking myself what the film has to say about film, about genre(s) and about life. And I'm also looking for films that challenge my expectation of narrative -- keeping me guessing and uncertain about both what the specific story of the film is and how it's going to be told. A number of low budget horror films and thrillers have done this for me recently, collectively, far better than many bigger budget films and more interestingly than most more drama-y less genre-y art films I've seen, especially among American independent filmmakers.

I'll start with Jeremy Saulnier's work. When I'm watching films like Blue Ruin or Green Room, the thing that grabs me first is how seriously the writer-director takes his characters. What draws us into his worlds are believable characters who want very specific things both before and after they find themselves in extraordinary situations. Everyone in both of these features feels like a three-dimensional human and has their own agenda, even if they are only in a scene or two. Hell, in Green Room, even the dog gets a character arc. And for all of the lip service The Invitation's writers and director pay to character in their interviews, they don't come anywhere close to the understated depth of Saulnier's work.

Jeff Nichols is another filmmaker whose genre work I'm drawn to for similar reasons. And it would be difficult to find a better example of the kinds of films I'm championing than Take Shelter.

You mentioned Adam Wingard's You're Next, which I still haven't seen. But I have seen his more recent film The Guest, and even within the heightened genre context of that film he manages to create more credibly autonomous characters than the red shirts and red herrings of The Invitation. I'd even argue that The Guest has a few legitimate things to say about PTSD and America's decades' long wars.

A few films you mentioned like The Sacrament and The Sound of My Voice have way more to say about cults than The Invitation. But I'd add Martha Marcy May Marlene and, going back further, The Rapture and The New Age to that list.

You also mentioned Upstream Color, a film I love. Shane Carruth exemplifies the creative energy and integrity I'm talking about. Dollar for dollar, moment for moment, film for film he's probably the most talented of all of these younger low budget genre filmmakers. I've seen Primer dozens of times and I can still find new things to admire.

Here's a bit I wrote about this trend in the Films of 2014 thread that covers some of the same ground and mentions a few more films. The ones that stick out from 2015 include It Follows, which you mention, and also Ex Machina, The Gift, Z for Zachariah [the same director's first film Compliance is another great example of what I'm talking about -- a contained thriller set authentically in the world of minimum wage McJobs]. And from 2014 the titles I haven't mentioned or linked to: The Babadook, Cheap Thrills, Enemy, Nightcrawler, Under the Skin.

And let's not forget what's probably the best new film I've seen this year: The Witch, which, from what I understand, had about the same budget as The Invitation, somewhere around a million dollars.

While it's true that some of these titles have slightly higher budgets or are foreign productions or co-productions, what they all have in common, and what they have in spades compared to The Invitation is a kind of seriousness and depth both in spite of and because of their genre trappings and limited budgets, a desire to give us something more than a film that was shot cheaply or in one place in a few weeks because that was all they could afford.

[Lost Highway]

I haven't seen The Witch and Green Room yet, which I'm both looking forward to, but I'm afraid I like The Invitation better than many of the films you mentioned (sorry but Nightcrawler, The Babadook, Blue Ruin, Z for Zacharia, Cheap Thrills, Take Shelter and Enemy did nothing or only very little for me). To state that the bluntly exploitative The Sacrament has anything of value to say about cults is something I find confounding. It just updated the Jonestwon massacre for the age of the found footage horror film, but did precious little with it apart from goosing us with its re-enactment of a historical mass murder.

I still don't think an exercise in suspense and style like The Invitation has to say much about New Age cults. My love for Hitchcock has taught me long ago to judge films by what's on the screen rather than by what directors say in interviews (something I'm only very rarely interested in). Genre films are not what I go to for what they have to say about life, so we are probably looking for different things there. I mostly enjoy them for the joy of pure cinema, a flexing of filmmaking skills.

Glad you like a Upstream Color though, it gets my goat when people dismiss it as pretentious, which seems to happen a lot. It's my favourite film of the last few years. I find it thoroughly sincere and it did things I genuinely haven't seen done before.

Sorry, I too am late with my reply. Refurbishing part of my apartment has swallowed up my life.

[warren oates]

I'm afraid I like The Invitation better than many of the films you mentioned (sorry but Nightcrawler, The Babadook, Blue Ruin, Z for Zacharia, Cheap Thrills, Take Shelter and Enemy did nothing or only very little for me).

Ouch! Those are some pretty wide-ranging disses. This almost makes me want to write a new tagline for The Invitation: "The low budget genre film for people who don't like low budget genre films!"

To state that the bluntly exploitative The Sacrament has anything of value to say about cults is something I find confounding. It just updated the Jonestwon massacre for the age of the found footage horror film, but did precious little with it apart from goosing us with its re-enactment of a historical mass murder.

The Sacrament isn't really a pseudo documentary or a found footage film. But re-enacting a notorious cult mass murder is entirely the point. The Sacrament puts us in the middle of that carnage in a way even the best documentaries about Jonestown never have and never could. In that respect, I'd rate it nearly on par with films like United 93 and Compliance whose existence is almost wholly justified by a faithful step by step dramatization of true life horror stories we all thought we'd understood because they'd been so exhaustively covered, but that, once we're inside them with the characters, take on whole new dimensions of emotion and complexity.

I still don't think an exercise in suspense and style like The Invitation has to say much about New Age cults. My love for Hitchcock has taught me long ago to judge films by what's on the screen rather than by what directors say in interviews (something I'm only very rarely interested in). Genre films are not what I go to for what they have to say about life, so we are probably looking for different things there. I mostly enjoy them for the joy of pure cinema, a flexing of filmmaking skills.

I guess the Godwin's law of film discussion boards is that Hitchcock will invariably be invoked. Though, for me, the master's work has little in common with what's on offer in The Invitation, which feels more like it's about waiting for a few not so surprising surprises than hanging out with slowly mounting suspense. I'd say a recent film like The Hateful Eight is a much more deserving descendant of contained thrillers like Rope.

[Lost Highway]

I'm afraid I like The Invitation better than many of the films you mentioned (sorry but Nightcrawler, The Babadook, Blue Ruin, Z for Zacharia, Cheap Thrills, Take Shelter and Enemy did nothing or only very little for me).

Ouch! Those are some pretty wide-ranging disses. This almost makes me want to write a new tagline for The Invitation: "The low budget genre film for people who don't like low budget genre films!"

To state that the bluntly exploitative The Sacrament has anything of value to say about cults is something I find confounding. It just updated the Jonestwon massacre for the age of the found footage horror film, but did precious little with it apart from goosing us with its re-enactment of a historical mass murder.

The Sacrament isn't really a pseudo documentary or a found footage film. But re-enacting a notorious cult mass murder is entirely the point. The Sacrament puts us in the middle of that carnage in a way even the best documentaries about Jonestown never have and never could. In that respect, I'd rate it nearly on par with films like United 93 and Compliance whose existence is almost wholly justified by a faithful step by step dramatization of true life horror stories we all thought we'd understood because they'd been so exhaustively covered, but that, once we're inside them with the characters, take on whole new dimensions of emotion and complexity.

I still don't think an exercise in suspense and style like The Invitation has to say much about New Age cults. My love for Hitchcock has taught me long ago to judge films by what's on the screen rather than by what directors say in interviews (something I'm only very rarely interested in). Genre films are not what I go to for what they have to say about life, so we are probably looking for different things there. I mostly enjoy them for the joy of pure cinema, a flexing of filmmaking skills.

I guess the Godwin's law of film discussion boards is that Hitchcock will invariably be invoked. Though, for me, the master's work has little in common with what's on offer in The Invitation, which feels more like it's about waiting for a few not so surprising surprises than hanging out with slowly mounting suspense. I'd say a recent film like The Hateful Eight is a much more deserving descendant of contained thrillers like Rope.

I like nothing more than low budget genre films, I've just seen enough of them for me not to fall for the latest indie horror movie hyped at Sundance. There are plenty of low budget genre films with a less high profile than those you mentioned, which I far prefer.

The Sacrament is a found footage film, I don't understand why you need to pretend otherwise. There is nothing wrong with that either, I don't mind them when they are done well. Compliance and United 93 are close reconstructions of particular cases. The Sacrament is an exploitation film loosely based on a real case. I don't think they are the same.

Absolutely nowhere did I compare The Invitation to the work of Hitchcock. I think I was very clear in which context I used his name.

[DarkImbecile]

You may not think the film is saying much about New Age beliefs or grief but the filmmakers sure do and here's the evidence, an interview with the Q&A's Jeff Goldsmith, wherein both writers and the director not only spend the vast majority of their time discussing themes, ideas and character, but they also -- threw up in my throat a little, sorry -- compare their work to Michael Haneke's.

I liked The Invitation considerably more than you did, but I can see where you might want more from it in several areas. That said, having both seen it and listened to the podcast you link to in the last couple of days, I have to say that your criticisms above rooted in the creators' comments in that interview don't hold up. The writers and Kusama absolutely spend their time discussing theme, ideas, and character (not much else to discuss besides technical process when someone's asking about your movie), but not in a way that betrayed any pretension to making authoritative statements on cults or New Age beliefs or anything else beyond trying to explore characters they found interesting in a a situation they found compelling. Also, they mention Haneke, Polanski, and others not in the process of drawing comparisons to their film but in elaborating on their inspirations during the creative process, which isn't nearly as vomit-inducingly audacious as you've made it sound. It's fair to find fault in the quality of their work or the themes they thought worth exploring, but it's unnecessary and unfair to accuse them or the film of having too much self-regard on the basis of that interview.

You mentioned Adam Wingard's You're Next, which I still haven't seen. But I have seen his more recent film The Guest, and even within the heightened genre context of that film he manages to create more credibly autonomous characters than the red shirts and red herrings of The Invitation. I'd even argue that The Guest has a few legitimate things to say about PTSD and America's decades' long wars.

I really enjoyed The Guest as well, though I think I found far more substance in what The Invitation was saying about grief than any themes there were examined in Wingard's film. For example, I liked the way that the

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mercy killing of the coyote that opens the film parallels with the cultists' view that people suffering from grief and trauma are wounded in the same way a crippled animal might be, and that ending their suffering so they can be in a better place is the right thing to do. It also highlights the selfishness of that view in making clear that they believe there will be a reunion with those they love, empowering them to make this decision for people they ostensibly care about. In this respect, the film seems to be saying less about death cults and more about religion in general, its inclination to put off dealing with reality until a more metaphysical reckoning process can be initiated by an external force, and the need to force others to see the truth as you understand it if they won't accept it willingly.

I'm not making the case that it will go down in the annals of film history, but The Invitation for me was a pleasant surprise: well-constructed, character-focused, and - as others have mentioned - more than ably directed by Kusama, who I'm now excited to follow.

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Also surprising: I went into the film having seen nothing about it but the poster, and based on that image (the lead protagonist framed by a glass of red liquid against a moonlight night) and what little cryptic, spolier-avoiding commentary I had heard, I was convinced that the film involved vampirism. I like the actual film better than that imagined version.