The Invitation (2015) | Plot, Cast & Horror Facts

The Invitation is a 2015 psychological horror film by Karyn Kusama about a dinner party whose hosts conceal a lethal plan.

At a Glance

Overview

Will and his girlfriend Kira drive into the Hollywood Hills for a dinner party at the house Will once shared with his ex-wife, Eden. Two years earlier their young son, Ty, died in an accident, and Eden vanished from their circle of friends. Now she and her new husband, David, have invited everyone back. They seem serene, almost glowing, and eager to talk about a group they met in Mexico that helped them through their grief.

Will cannot share their calm. The house is full of memories of his son, and small details keep catching his eye: David locks the front door, a guest named Choi is late, the windows are barred, and two strangers from the group, the gentle, unsettling Pruitt and the free-spirited Sadie, have joined the party. Over drinks the hosts show a video of the group’s leader comforting a dying woman. Every time Will raises an alarm, his friends see a man still broken by grief making a scene. Kusama keeps the camera close to Will, so the audience shares both his suspicion and the possibility that he is simply unwell. The single house and the slow tightening of social pressure make it a cousin of contained thrillers from Halloween to Scream, where an ordinary home becomes a trap and every guest is a possible threat.

Production

Kusama, whose earlier films include Girlfight and Jennifer’s Body, directed from a screenplay by her husband Phil Hay and his long-time writing partner Matt Manfredi. The writers had developed the script years earlier and saw it as a story about grief and about how hard it is to read other people’s responses to loss. The film was made independently on a budget of about $1 million, produced by Gamechanger Films with Lege Artis and XYZ Films, and shot almost entirely in a single house in Los Angeles. Bobby Shore’s cinematography uses warm candlelight and the house’s long sightlines to suggest comfort and entrapment at the same time, and Theodore Shapiro’s score stays low and patient. After premiering at SXSW in March 2015, it was picked up by Drafthouse Films and released in cinemas and on demand in April 2016.

Cast

• Logan Marshall-Green as Will
• Tammy Blanchard as Eden
• Michiel Huisman as David
• Emayatzy Corinealdi as Kira
• John Carroll Lynch as Pruitt
• Lindsay Burdge as Sadie
• Michelle Krusiec, Mike Doyle and Jay Larson as old friends at the party

Reception

The Invitation was widely praised. Rotten Tomatoes lists approximately 90 percent approval based on more than 100 reviews, with a consensus calling it a uniquely effective and surprisingly clever slow-building thriller, and Metacritic scores it 74 out of 100. Critics admired the sustained tension, Marshall-Green’s raw performance, Lynch’s eerie friendliness and Kusama’s refusal to tip her hand too early. It won the Grand Prize for Best Feature at the 2015 Sitges Film Festival. Its theatrical gross was tiny, but streaming made it one of the most recommended horror films of the decade, and it is often credited with re-establishing Kusama as a major genre director. Its reputation has only grown since, and it is still widely cited as a touchstone of slow-burn psychological horror.

Spoiler: The Ending

Will’s fears prove right. Eden, David, Pruitt and Sadie belong to a death cult that believes dying will free them from pain. They pour poisoned wine for everyone, and the attack begins when one guest is shot and another collapses. Eden, who has drunk the poison herself, joins the attack, and the survivors fight back through the house. Will and Kira kill the remaining attackers, and the dying Eden asks Will to take her outside. As they stand in the garden, Will and Kira look over the hills and see red lanterns hanging at house after house, the same signal David hung on his own gate. Sirens and helicopters fill the night. The ending confirms Will’s suspicions and widens the horror from one dinner party to a whole city.

Trivia & Facts

• The film marked Kusama’s return to independent feature directing after years working in television.
• Phil Hay, one of its two screenwriters, is Kusama’s husband.
• It won the top prize for Best Feature at the 2015 Sitges Film Festival.
• The red lantern David hangs on the gate is the visual clue that pays off in the final shot.
• It was produced on a budget of about $1 million and shot almost entirely inside one house.
• John Carroll Lynch, who plays Pruitt, is also known for roles in Zodiac and American Horror Story.