Sunday, April 10, 2016

"The Invitation" is all bark with no bite, a thriller so dead set to thrill that it just falls flat on its face



A very overrated movie that is more hype than any actual thrills or scares. The premise itself is interesting enough, and the first act is somewhat intriguing, but the more this movie went on, the stupider and more boring it became, with the third act turning into a laughingstock, of sorts. I was plagued with simple questions during its last 20 minutes, such as, why would the filmmakers build up the tension and suspense, with so many vampirish suggestions, only to let us down and unleash the "terror" at the end with very anti-climactic gun-murders? And why in the world is Tammy Blanchard's Eden character portrayed so contradictory from early on and then up until the end? Is it bad acting, or bad direction? Perhaps both?  Karyn Kusama is clearly an overrated director, as her previous works can attest (Aeon Flux, Jennifer's Body, etc). The film falsely pretends to know what it's doing, only to completely mishandle the most important part of the climax, stripping it of any suspense or real terror its earlier scenes suggested we'd have. What we're eventually left with is a series of scenes that amount to a very mild and unsatisfying conclusion, which leave the mark of some minor barks, without any bite. How in the world did this movie get 92% on RT is beyond me.
D

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