The Invitation

The Invitation (2016) takes place at a dinner party, and the man invited thinks something is wrong. Will is invited to his former wife Eden's house. They lost their son years ago and separated. The house is the one they lived in together. His new partner comes with him. Eden and her new husband are cheerful. They describe meeting a group in Mexico and finding a way to deal with pain. They show a video. They lock the door, saying it is because of the flies. Will is uneasy. But everyone looks at him the same way: he never got over his grief, so he is paranoid. All of the tension comes from that uncertainty. Is something wrong, or is he? The film leans neither way and the audience cannot decide either. The clues are in plain sight and every one of them has an innocent explanation: the locked door, no signal, a guest who does not arrive, a bottle of wine. Karyn Kusama directed. It takes place almost entirely in one house and the pace is deliberately slow; nothing happens for the first hour. The final shot changes the scale of the film at a stroke and is the most discussed thing about it. It was made cheaply. Logan Marshall-Green stars. It runs 100 minutes. Good for: slow tension, single location films, and psychological horror. Less good for: the first half is very slow, the subject is a child's death, and the ending is harsh.