Welcome to JOE’s 31 Days Of Hallowe’en. For each and every day of October, we’ll be bringing you a horror movie to tuck into for the lead up to the big night. It could be new, old, an undiscovered gem, or a classic you’ll have seen a thousand times. No matter what it is, we guarantee you that it is brilliant, and it is SCARY.
For Day 4, we’ll looking back over the 2016 little seen gem, The Invitation.
“There is nothing to be afraid of.”
We’re guessing that if you’re a horror fan, you’ve probably seen Get Out already. One of the most talked about and most critically adored and commercially successful movies not just of 2017, but of the past decade.
Here’s the thing, The Invitation shares a lot in common with Get Out, but hardly anyone has seen it, despite the fact that it might be even better.
Tom Hardy lookalike competition winner Logan-Marshall Green plays Will, a clearly emotionally damaged man who is invited to a very lavish dinner in a very beautiful home up in the Hollywood Hills along with his supportive, beautiful girlfriend Kira (Ballers’ Emayatzy Corinealdi).
The thing is, the dinner party is being thrown by Will’s ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard), who he hasn’t spoken to in over two years (for reasons the movie will slowly drip-feed to us), and her new husband David (Game Of Thrones’ Michiel Huisman), and Will isn’t really in the mood to play nice with these folk, but Kira feels it will be good for him to attempt to heal old wounds.
However, once they get to the house – which reveals itself to Will to almost be closer to a fortified compound – and they’re introduced to the other guests that Eden and David have also invited, Will begins to think that something is up. Is this some kind of intervention? Has he been lured into some kind of self-help group seminar? Or is there something much more sinister afoot?
Here’s the trailer, which if you plan on watching the movie, we kinda recommend you avoid, as it steers too closely to spoiler territory for our liking:
Clip via Movieclips Film Festivals & Indie Films
To say much more about the directions the movie takes would be to give the game away, but by so perfectly setting up Will as being so damaged that what he perceives to be threatening behaviour may end up being nothing more than his own paranoid delusion is played to perfection, as you the viewer are constantly left switching sides between who you believe to be the real bad guy in the who house.
And finally, and this isn’t something we say lightly, it may feature the most perfect final shot for a horror movie ever seen. If you watch The Invitation and you don’t get total goosebumps from that very last image, check your pulse because there’s something very wrong.
Check out our previous recommendations below:
Day 2 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
