{"id":54727,"date":"2022-09-05T12:31:05","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T16:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=54727"},"modified":"2022-09-05T12:31:17","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T16:31:17","slug":"movie-review-the-invitation%ef%bf%bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/09\/movie-review-the-invitation%ef%bf%bc\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review – The Invitation\ufffc"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            Last year, a longstanding tradition was bucked when the MCU\u2019s \u201cShang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings\u201d opened to an impressive $75 million at the domestic box office over Labor Day weekend. For some reason, maybe having to do with the kids being back in school, Labor Day weekend is typically one of the worst box office weekends of the year. Not just one of the worst holiday weekends, weekends overall. Now in 2022, things are back to relative normal, and theaters were once again nearly deserted over Labor Day weekend. The big movie was a re-release of \u201cSpider-Man: No Way Home\u201d from last December with $6 million, followed by \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d from May, \u201cDC League of Superpets\u201d from July, \u201cBullet Train\u201d from early August, and \u201cThe Invitation\u201d from last week. I was on vacation last weekend and unable to review \u201cThe Invitation,\u201d so it gets the dubious honor of warranting a review on this ditch on the box office calendar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The film follows Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel), a struggling caterer from New York City. She takes a DNA test and finds out she has family in England. She meets a rich cousin named Oliver (Hugh Skinner), who invites her to a family wedding at the estate of even richer family friend Walter (Thomas Doherty). Parts of the trip are like a dream come true, with luxuriousness at every turn and an extended family that welcomes her with open arms (none of the white relatives are bothered that she\u2019s African-American, owing to an interracial affair a few generations back). Other parts are not so pleasant, like condescending butler Fields (Sean Pertwee) and standoffish bridesmaid Viktoria (Stephanie Corneilussen), though timid bridesmaid Lucy (Alana Boden) seems okay. Other parts are downright frightening, like things going bump in the night. So many things go bump in the night, as if this movie can\u2019t think of a way to drum up scares for its first hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            It\u2019s not hard to figure out that something is amiss with the rich weirdos, especially because the movie opens with a suicide by hanging and maids keep getting yanked offscreen, never to be seen again. I thought the villains were just into run-of-the-mill ritualistic killing, but it turns out there\u2019s a supernatural element too. The mastermind behind it all is named Walt. Change the W in his name to the letter before it in the alphabet, the T to the similar-sounding D, and switch the A and L around, and you\u2019ll get an idea of what the twist is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Once the secret is out, the movie is just plain goofy. A dinner scene marks a point of no return for any hope this movie had at dignity, plus it features a death that I felt had no place in a PG-13 movie (a last second cutaway from\u2026 well, a cut, is what technically saves it). The movie wasn\u2019t great at doing horror before with its cheap jump scares, but there was potential in its \u201cGet Out\u201d-meets-\u201cReady Or Not\u201d setup. And Evie is a likeable protagonist, struggling to keep her humility in the extravagant setting with funny video-chat help from her best friend (Courtney Taylor). But Walt is bland in every role: as a host, as a potential love interest, and as a villain. I won\u2019t say that secondary villains Fields and Viktoria \u201csteal the show\u201d exactly, but I would have preferred either of them as a sort of Big Bad at the movie\u2019s climax. It\u2019s an easy joke to say that you should decline \u201cThe Invitation,\u201d but judging by the lousy box office, you\u2019ve probably been doing that anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Invitation\u201d is rated PG-13 for terror, violent content, some strong language, sexual content and nudity. Its running time is 105 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             Last year, a longstanding tradition was bucked when the MCU\u2019s \u201cShang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings\u201d opened to an impressive $75 million at the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":54728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1600],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54727"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54729,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54727\/revisions\/54729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}