Come Die With Me

The Invitation (Karyn Kasuma, 2016)

Watching Candy Land (2023) earlier this year had me hungry for another religious cult themed movie that wasn't burdened with tired and recurring folk-horror tropes. It was great when Robert Eggers unleashed The Witch in 2015, but eight years later, I'm officially at Mr. Creosote's bursting point with all that pagan shite. Thankfully, The Invitation (2015) fulfills this film craving.

Set in the upmarket Hollywood hills of L.A, Logan Marshall-Green, alternatively known as Lidl brand Tom Hardy, plays The Invitation's protagonist, Will. Bizarrely, he, and his new lady Kira, are invited to his former home for a lush dinner party hosted by his ex-wife, Eden and her new husband, David. Call me old fashioned, but what kind of person would even attend any kind of party event hosted by an ex?

With John Carroll Lynch, the creepy looking bald giant from the de riguer thriller for millennials, Zodiac (2007), and a half-naked (the bottom half in case you were wondering) hippie chick called Sadie, à la the Tate-LaBianca murders, turning up as odd guests, it's not hard to predict that things are probably going to go sour for this swanky soirée. And things definitely go south when hosts Eden and her second husband David announce they're members of a religious cult along with the two other aforementioned nutjobs. What follows is the consumption of ultra expensive Châteauneuf-du-Plonk, truth games and watching a video of a dying cultist ascending to the afterlife. Oh, what an atmosphere! I love a party with a happy atmosphere!

As a slow-burner, The Invitation's pacing might try the patience of some viewers, but it happens to be a rare example where the played out cliche of continuous gas lighting towards the protagonist's paranoia genuinely works; which wouldn't have been the case if there weren't any supportative scenes devoted to Will and Eden's back story - before and after their shared tragedy. Also, watching LA hipsters, bereft of any intelligence with regards to their self presevation, enduring a multitude of strange and worrying occurrences while still treating Will as a miserable party pooper, is laughably entertaining to me.

Kasuma's film reeks of hipster mumblecore, which would be an automatic turn-off usually, but in the context of bourgeois and narcisstic thirty-somethings at a poncey dinner party, it's positively part and parcel with providing a degree of realism. The Invitation is also part of a mini-wave of films from the 2010s pertaining to all things Hollyweird, supporting the notion of LA being a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. It's why I also feel so drawn to the ambitious mess of the conspiracy noir, Under the Silver Lake (2018) and the slept-on, body horror Starry Eyes (2014); now even more thematically relevant after the #MeToo movement.

First caught The Invitation by chance while casually browsing Netflix. Going in knowing absolutely nothing about the film, it was one of the few rewarding discoveries on that awful streaming service. A tense and suspenseful psychological thriller, laced with enough atmospheric dread to make it feel completely compelling. So chuffed this was given a nice physical media release eventually. 

I've had the misfortune of catching some of Karyn Kasuma's other films and The Invitation is the only one genuinely worth revisiting ever again; not even a demonic Megan Fox in her prime in Jennifer's Body (2009) is worth the time. The feminist-themed horror anthology XX (2017) was completely forgettable. Kasuma's most recent feature film, Destroyer (2018), was a soporifically dull neo-noir. Only memorable part was an unrecognisable Nicole Kidman giving some invalid bloke a hand job! Despite all those duds in her repertoire, it only goes to show that a bad film maker like Kasuma is still potentially capable of churning out a rare gem like The Invitation at some point in their lifetime.