The Invitation

Director: Karyn Kusama
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 1.0

A bearded man named Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend (Emayatzy Corinealdi) travel to Will's ex-wife Eden's place in Los Angeles where her (Tammy Blanchard) and her current husband David (Michiel Huisman) are hosting a dinner party ... and Will is constantly reminded about the death of their son (which caused their split) and bothered by the increasingly bizarre behavior of the guests. You know you're in trouble when in the first five minutes you need a Big Symbolic Moment - Will hitting a coyote with his car and then having to finish it off with a tire iron - to start off the soon-to-become monotonous attempt at 'dread.' It's riddled with a plethora of unlikeable characters ... especially Will, who is so locked inside himself he's difficult to empathize with. The third act is a total mess with its Mexican Death Cult angle (?) - it's as if the screenwriters saw Todd Haynes' Safe and thought, "Hey, let's make something kind of like that, only less intelligent."