The Invitation (2022)

Streaming Service: Netflix
Movie Name/Year: The Invitation (2022)
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Length: 1h 45min
Rating: PG-13
Production/Distribution: Screen Gems, Mid Atlantic Films, Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE)
Director: Jessica M. Thompson
Writer: Blair Butler
Actors: Nathalie Emmanuel, Thomas Doherty, Sean Pertwee, Hugh Skinner, Carol Ann Crawford, Alana Boden, Stephanie Corneliussen, Courtney Taylor
 
Blurb from IMDb: A young woman is courted and swept off her feet, only to realize a gothic conspiracy is afoot.
 

Selina’s Point of View:
As radiant as Nathalie Emmanuel (Army of Thieves, Game of Thrones, F9: The Fast Saga) was, she felt completely out of place in The Invitation. It wasn’t good enough for her.
 
Emmanuel acted her ass off, but the rest of the film dragged lazily behind. It offered nothing really for her to work with. It was barely even a romance up until the climax when things started happening, and then it was all predictable.
 
Sure, there were a couple of horror scenes up until then, but they were so cut and paste that it wasn’t worth it.
 

I will say that the spa day scene was pretty good. It had a lot of suspense, and I was on the edge of my seat. Like Nathalie, it felt like it should have been part of a much better film.
 
The idea behind The Invitation wasn’t bad. I also liked how it touched on the dehumanization of service workers. I feel like we’ve been getting a lot of class warfare flicks lately, and it’s not very hard to guess why. A lot more could have been done with those concepts.
 
I’m also a little angry at the trailer. It had me believing that The Invitation was going to be the next Ready or Not (2019). Instead, it had all the thrilling parts of the film, leaving nothing left to surprise audiences during the full runtime. I’d rather be told too little in the coming attractions, than too much.
 
As much as I wanted to like The Invitation, it just didn’t work for me.
 

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 29%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 59%
Metascore – 45%
Metacritic User Score – 3.2
IMDB Score –5.3/10
 
Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 1.5/5
 
P.S. There’s a rated R version available on DVD. This review is only for the PG-13 version.
 
Movie Trailer: