The Invitation

The Invitation

After the death of her mother, Evie is approached by an unknown cousin who invites her to a lavish wedding in the English countryside. Soon, she realizes a gothic conspiracy is afoot and must fight for survival as she uncovers twisted secrets in her family’s history.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 120 minutes
  • Genre: Horror, Thrillers
  • Stars: Nathalie Emmanuel, Thomas Doherty, Stephanie Corneliussen, Alana Boden, Courtney Taylor, Hugh Skinner, Sean Pertwee, Jeremy Wheeler, Kata Sarbó, Scott Alexander Young, Virág Bárány, Elizabeth Counsell, Carol Ann Crawford, Christine Grace Szarkó
  • Director: Jessica M. Thompson
 Comments
  • claudio_carvalho - 8 June 2024
    Underrated Vampire Movie
    In New York, the brown Evelyn "Evie" Jackson (Nathalie Emmanuel) and the black Grace (Courtney Taylor) are best friends and work as free-lancers at a catering service. Grace gives a bag to Evie she got in the party they are working with a bottle of wine and a DNA kit. Evie is an aspirant ceramic artist that has just lost her mother and has no family. When she sees the DNA kit, she learns that it belongs to a company that researches family trees to locate members. Evie submits her DNA and soon she learns that she has a distant British cousin, Oliver Alexander (Hugh Skinner), who is working in New York. They schedule a meeting at a restaurant where he explains the color of her skin, and he invites Evie to go to a wedding of one member of the Alexander family in England. He pays her ticket and Evie travels and meets Oliver at the airport. They go to an isolated manor, where Evie meets the owner, the handsome Walter "Walt" De Ville (Thomas Doherty), after a discussion with the rude butler Mr. Field (Sean Pertwee). She is welcomed by her maid Mrs. Swift (Carol Ann Crawford), by the Alexander family, the friendly Lucy (Alana Boden) and the obnoxious Viktoria (Stephanie Corneliussen). Evie and Walt are attracted by each other, and they have sex. But Evie notes that weird things happen in the mansion, and soon she finds the secret of the families.

    "The Invitation" (2022) is an underrated vampire movie in IMDb. I had no idea that it was a vampire movie, and the conclusion of the story was a great surprise. Nathalie Emmanuel has a good performance and the explanation for the color of her skin for descent of a British family is given along the film, when she meets Oliver. It is hard to understand the haters of such entertaining movie indicated for fans of the genre. My vote is seven.

    Title (Brazil): "Convite Maldito" ("Dammed Invitation")
  • paudman - 25 May 2024
    Racist, cliched, stereotypical.
    Imagine we're going to make a movie about a black African family. What do we know? Well, they live in mud huts, wear furs and grass skirts, have bones through their noses, eat missionaries and say "Ugga Ugga" all the time. Oh, and we all go on about how black they are. Would you SERIOUSLY stereotype anyone like that? Well, this movie does. We have two black girls, one almost a real caricature of herself, who go on and on and on about how WHITE some people are. Imagine! One then goes to England, where she finds that the British are all so stuck up and snobbishly boring, they talk in posh accents and drink champagne, they live in stately homes and treat their servants like rubbish, and they're all SO WHITE. Amazing. As a result they ostracised her ancestor years ago when she had an affair with a black footman, so they're all so racist. She, of course, loves the servants, stands up for the weak and underclass, and is determined to bring all this down. Obviously because they're all SO WHITE. In the middle of this we have a story where she finds out through a DNA test that she's related to old British money, flies over to England, and stays in a dark, forbidding, eerie stately home with dark walls, scary statues and candles for lighting - the way all old British families do, as we all know. They still use an ice house, for goodness sake. Amazingly the Lord of the Manor falls in love with her after literally 30 seconds meeting, tattoos, attitude and all, she is suspicious about a locked library with no reason whatsoever, breaks in, uncovers a vampire ring, destroys it, then goes after the survivor. Are you sure, I mean: he is SO WHITE. Have you ever seriously watched a movie where the main characters complain about someone being SO BLACK, apart from Blazing Saddles? You wouldn't, so why allow it here? A ridiculous, shallow parody of a movie, cliched with eerie wine cellars and suspicious bars on the windows, wooden-faced staff and Hooray-Henry guests, and written by someone who just had to get the race and feminist issue to the forefront; at times it was hard to hear anything over the sound of grinding axes. Unbelievable in this day and age. One to avoid, unless you want to waste two hours shaking your head in disbelief at the dialogue. "Are you SURE that's him? I mean, he is SOOOOO WHITE."
  • AritonM - 13 May 2024
    As 5 as a 5 can be
    Can't say I hated it and can't say I liked it. It was just something I watched for about 100 minutes.

    Can we make a new movie without having to beat up on a certain group of people with a certain gender they were born into? We get it white male bad. British white male snobby and rich every single one of them and colonialists even though they were born in the 21st century.

    Also let's please stop making movies with the "I told you so best friend". Girllll! That is the whitest man I've ever seen. Girlllll you have gotten any in a longgg time. Girlllll you better be careful cause these people are crazy. You almost hope the friend will somehow "meet her demise".

    It's ok to put modern twists on stories, but we don't need to make another cliche modern movie where the main character has to look like a carbon copy west village New Yorker who happens to have the best friend who knows everything in life. It's just lazy writing.

    If you need something to take up less than 2 hours of your time and be a little entertaining, this is the movie for you.
  • alisonparkerlamont - 5 January 2023
    This might have been good but the trailer ruined all (per usual)
    This film tries so hard to be "Gothic"in the veins of Rebecca and the like. It falls miserably flat and burns through its few twists in the trailer. If you've seen the trailer, that's it. No stone left uncovered, no final twists or anything. The protagonist's best friend is a real gem though.

    The costuming is often striking. Costumes and set pieces are one of the few places this movie finds its footing. The pacing is really off. Instead of taking its time with character development to pull off a slow burn, it instead spends its first two acts meandering through messy yet predictable plot machinations while offering no real suspense.

    I do not recommend.
  • balthesaur - 1 January 2023
    If it seems too good to be true, it probably is
    'The Invitation' tells the story of Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel), an orphan and stuggling ceramics sculptor, who takes a genealogy test and learns she has distant relatives she never knew about. Cousin Oliver (Hugh Skinner) invites Evie to stay in an English estate with her rich, aristocratic family, headed by the manor's lord, Walter De Ville (Thomas Doherty). Through a series of pleasant experiences, Evie begins to lower her guard, until a sudden revelation of the manor's true intentions are revealed and she has to try desperately to escape with her life.

    The film a decently acted and shot, but the script is fairly predictable. There are some nice scenes of gore, but for the most part, the film seems tame when compared to similar films in the same genre. The special effects are great and the flow is steady.

    Worth a watch!
  • sebbytong-98539 - 30 December 2022
    Meghan, that you?
    The Wife saw this movie and thinks it could almost be a metaphor for the Meghan story.

    At least from their perspective.

    An American from a seemingly humble background. She is kind, breezy. Then she gets swept off her feet by a British aristocrat. And when she is in the UK among the snooty set, they raise their eyebrows because she is casual in her manner and shows empathy for the hired help.

    The British aristocrat's family is initially friendly and curious about her. But of course over time, they reveal themselves to be quite sinister.

    Tell me the scriptwriters were not inspired by Ms Markle's story...
  • tgcme - 29 December 2022
    For the twilight fans who aged
    If you want to like Twilight but you don't want to admit it because it stopped being cool ages ago, this is for you. Written by girls who hid Twilight deep down in their souls waiting for the day they could make a grown up movie.

    Read all the other reviews and they're true.

    This movie is vapid, cliche, and just so so stupid.

    Nothing about it really works.

    It could have been pretty good but it forgot to be good.

    It's too rushed, too absurdly contrived, to overloaded with attempted lore. It needed to be longer and it needed to be R. It needed to lean in and own it's premise instead of pulling punches.

    And it needed much much better actors.
  • plasssaskia - 27 December 2022
    Alright movie to watch online then in theaters
    So I saw the trailer for this movie but it was not that fascinating for me to be like oh I want to see that movie. Upon scrolling through Netflix and seeing it there I clicked on the movie immediately. The trailer does not give away to much about the movie if i rememebr correctly. However when you finally see the surprise it fall short. As Im writing this review the head maid or whatever stated that she was good friends with Evie great great grandmother therefore if this was so long ago why when she died her body did not turn to dust like the others. Did they have to be stapped in the heart to turn to dust? But if gettig stabbed in the heart kills them then shouldn't they survive other bodily injuries? Wouldn't this be the same for the rude butler? Also like others said tr ending was so rushed. The movie had some long drawn out scene thay lasted like 1 hour but the last couple minutes of the reveal was like 35 min. One thing I did like was the ending when Evie and her friend went to kill her cousin lol like vampire slayers or something. Inaddition Evie was kinda Oblivious to the maids disappearing around her. Also Walter looking her up prior was major red flags. Lastly throughout her whole stay she did not physically see the bride or groom I think that should have been a red flag.
  • Headturner11 - 26 December 2022
    And a half
    I like the main actress but why did they make her American?!? Stupid politically correct nonsense! This could have been decent! Not original tho people have made decent stuff of similar shows-movies of the same style-genre! Again another movie without a story! What of these people? Who and what are they and how did they come to be? So we are too believe all of a sudden they're all crazy vampires or whatever they may be?! I knew in the very begining when the DNA test showed up that it would be about her results and them wanting her for them. The most ridiculous thing is now, how is she going to live amongst "normal" people when she knows nothing of what she is or how to survive?!? And yeah set the place ablaze when you could of lived in luxury and found out about the origins of what you've become! Even the writers must not have though that far or have known which is why they didn't expand on it!
  • kjjames81 - 3 December 2022
    Oh dear......
    First let me ask this simple question, what has happened to horror movies this year, nearly everyone I have seen has been really disappointing and not lived up to the hype they carry?

    Now onto this movie, it was bad and where do I start? Well firstly the story, it started off good and then about fifteen minutes into the film we are led to believe the main actress is simple and hasn't a clue about strangers on the internet, then there are the effects, these went from okay to dreadful with the fire scene near the end of the film. Then there is the ending story, it almost became a female Blade style film, this totally ruined the film for me, it went beyond stupid.

    A ruined chance of a film being good but again this shows the script writer didn't know how to carry on with this movie, give it a miss, I wish I did.