The Invitation Review: A waste of perfectly good bad vampires

Vampires are cinema’s most malleable monsters. They can sparkle, skate, yell “bat” or do gymnastics while performing their blood-sucking duties. In the horror movie The invitationVampires take on their more familiar roles as the rich and powerful in society when an unfortunate human guest joins them for the weekend. The invitation is by director Jessica M. Thompson (The light of the moon), and while it takes inspiration from several recent and successful out-of-place houseguest horror films, such as Go out and Ready or Not, The invitation Never manages to be scary and hides his vampires behind a lifeless love story.

The invitation follows Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel), an unhappy and over-the-top New York gig caterer who is fed up with her dead-end job, desperate to pursue her passion for ceramics and still devastated by the recent death of her mother. One day, Evie grabs a gift bag from a fancy event she’s hosting and tries out the DNA testing kit that came with it. The test connects her to a previously unknown branch of her family who lives in the upper echelons of English society. Before Evie knows it, she’s invited to a mysterious wedding at an English estate, where she meets and quickly falls in love with the enigmatic squire Walter (Thomas Doherty).

This series of events takes up almost the entire 105-minute running time of the film. This may come as a surprise to viewers who have seen promotional material for this film, which focuses much more on the story’s vampiric presence. The bait and switch to turn a dodgy romance into vampire violence wouldn’t be a huge problem if the film were willing to invest in the gothic style and dark atmosphere that helps make vampire love stories timelessly creepy. Instead, Thompson settles for awkward flirting shot as mundanely as a one-season Netflix teen show.

Though the story relies almost entirely on viewers believing that Walter is subtly seducing the worldly and cautious Evie, Emmanuel and Doherty never muster much chemistry other than that they’re both attractive people. The stiff, exposure-heavy dialogue never manages to make either character interesting, and leaves little room for the actors to add a spark or genuine emotion to the bewildering romance.

The script of the film looks even stranger Hellfest Co-writer Blair Butler goes to great lengths to convince viewers that Evie is too smart to fall prey to the lure of old money. As a black woman who has lived her entire life in the United States and knows what it’s like to be the disrespectful waitress at a rich person’s party (despite living in a murderous apartment in New York City), Evie constantly sympathizes with the abuses of the wedding. destined servants and swears to her best friend that she would never fall victim to the shackles of wealth and luxury that colonialism paid for. Then she does. Instantly. Without any power of persuasion and without any charm from Walter. While her sudden vulnerability might suggest that something supernatural is at play – something that might have helped sell the romance and left her with a momentous inner struggle – The invitation never makes any indication that this is the case.

In fact, Evie’s only reason to think of Walter as anything other than a rich playboy with a big house is that he apologizes to her when his butler is rude. (Yes, Aid is to blame if things go wrong with Evie. No, the filmmakers don’t acknowledge the irony.) The invitation desperately trying to emulate Jordan Peele’s embarrassing fish-out-of-water terror Go outwithout realizing that part of what made this film so spooky is the implication of a loving, meaningful relationship between the protagonist and one of the villains that began well before the film began.

The troublesome flirt in The invitation is occasionally punctuated by scenes that bring the film a little closer to the horror and whimsy promised by its vampiric premise. There are a few scenes with mysterious creatures lurking in the shadows or locked rooms guarding unseemly creatures of the night. These brief horror scenes are shot overly dark, with cheesy blue light obscuring most of the action. But they at least create a few seconds of suspense and provide a bit of the dark atmosphere that the rest of the film sorely lacks.

Finally, in the last 25 minutes, The invitation transforms into the vampire-slaying action film that Sony wanted viewers to believe throughout its run. Over a suitably spooky dinner — the film’s most effective scene, thanks to the presence of a dozen or so masked vampire cultists — Walter Evie finally explains his vampiric machinations. The film seems intent on revealing this information as a twist, but considering that it not only makes up most of the trailer but is also hinted at in the film’s prologue, Evie’s shock at the revelation at the end feels like the most surprising part of the scene. especially given the broad hints of something strange and nefarious.

Once the cat’s out of the bag The invitation eventually morphs into his best self, a mildly angry film about a woman who’s fed up with all those vampires and wants to kill them. The plot itself is mostly lackluster and bloodless, never reaching the dizzying violence or entertaining heights of Ready or Notthe film The invitation feels most committed. At least it’s more exciting than Evie and Walter’s amazing advert.

A part Go outa part Ready or Notand too few parts Dracula, The invitation is a pastiche of infinitely better horror stories it can never match. You can get vampires to do almost anything in movies, but The invitation commits the one unforgivable sin: making vampires boring.

The invitation opens in cinemas on August 26th.