The Invitation (2022)
The Invitation (2022), directed by Jessica M. Thompson, written by Blair Butler, is one of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen, one of the best romance movies I’ve ever seen, and one of the smartest metatextual take-downs of a horror classic.
It is currently sitting at 26% over on Rotten Tomatoes because critics have brain worms. Patriarchal brain worms I want to say?
There’s some kind of gender afoot here.
Let’s start with what the critics are saying. It is predictable, the dialogue is banal, and the scares are cheap. Baked in here are three assumptions:
- That a twisty surface level plot is a primary requirement for a broad audience.
- That dialogue must be witty or unexpected or otherwise dazzling, and that the surface reading of why these characters are saying what they are saying is all there is.
- That we see a horror movie to be startled and scared.
Which, in turn, causes me to assume that the requirement to be a movie critic is, possibly, a pulse. Because the media illiteracy these people are demonstrating is on a level with “Andor is bad because there aren’t enough Star Wars Easter eggs.”
Let’s talk about what the movie is. There’s no point keeping it spoiler free — the trailer spoils the whole thing, and appropriately so. I’ll keep the final plot points out of this so you can see precisely how it is solved, even if the broad strokes are, as the critics seethingly point out, predictable.
The Invitation is a gothic horror movie. There is a giant mansion, families with dark secrets, forbidden rooms, austere and ominous servants, and so on. It is deeply drenched in atmosphere and all the trappings of the genre. It is a love letter to the vocabulary of the genre. Does that make it predictable? Strange that we give more leeway to a Marvel movie ending with a punch up between the hero and the villain.
The Invitation is also, in its first half, a wonderful Harlequin novel. A poor black woman, a struggling artist who works in catering to pay the bills, is whisked away to aristocratic England when she discovers her long lost family. Everyone is charming as hell and the rich lord of the mansion, impossibly powerful and impossibly charming and head-spinningly handsome, immediately takes an interest in her.
This is where the first subversion of the source material happens. Not only is Walter De Ville charming and handsome and rich, he is written as an idealized love interest from a clearly feminist perspective.
The first time we see Evie take an interest is when he earnestly and sincerely apologizes to her for his behavior.
He absolutely listens to everything she says, treats her with respect, as an intellectual equal, and never once interrupts her. He’s perfect in a way in which we never see male romantic leads portrayed as perfect, outside of Bridgerton maybe.
The second subversion comes when we sit with how creepy these “poor girl swept away from her problems into a world of wealth and privilege” stories really are. We approach spoiler territory here, but the trailer isn’t shy to reveal this, so I won’t be either. If you want to go see this absolutely brilliant movie without knowing the central reveal, stop reading here and don’t see the trailer.
It is, of course, revealed that Walter De Ville is a vampire.
When he feasts on mortals, it is the servants he devours first. Class and gender and race (Evie is black, and this is brought up numerous times) suffuse this film. It is made clear that privilege, wealth and safety of the rich and powerful come at the explicit cost of the suffering of their inferiors.
And we don’t leave it there. Evie is to be one of Dracula’s brides, and the other two brides are white. It is very often these two white women we see upholding the reign of the monster that has claimed them all because at least for the time being, they benefit more from being under his thumb than not.
Finally, The Invitation is impeccably paced. Much to my spouse’s dislike, I’m the easiest audience to lose. Unless a film grabs me and never lets go, I’ll be on my phone most the time or excuse myself halfway through. I couldn’t look away from a frame of this. It starts as a wonderful romance (well, after a rather horror opening, which was also perfect) and never slows down, through all the horror foreshadowing and through the actual horror of the third act.
It is written with a masterful understanding of the urtext, Dracula, and its characters. There are, yes, Easter eggs, the one standard of quality by which we shall judge all content going forth. When the Harkers turned up, Yonah saw it coming from a mile away. But it uses its understanding of these characters to comment on the power dynamics happening here; Lucy is her usual happy go lucky / friendly self, up to a point. Where does she draw the line and go from appeasement to action? You’ll have to watch this movie find out.
So, finally, let’s return to why the critics said those things they said. The Invitation knowingly and winkingly plays 50 Shades of Grey / Bridgerton straight in its beginning; it then indulges in every Dracula related trope you care to name (there are broken mirrors, accidental cuts, even a bride of Dracula impossibly crawling on the canopy of a four-poster bed). These things are predictable and obvious and on the nose, but only if you remain in a very silly surface reading. The commentary on the genres from which these moments borrow is why this movie exists.
And yes, it’s a very feminist romance movie that turns into a very feminist horror movie. It’s not subtle about any of this. It is, in short, a movie with something to say. Maybe that’s too predictable.
I want to leave you with this: more than anything else, The Invitation is a pitch perfect crowd pleaser. It does all this smart stuff, yeah, but it’s mostly interested in entertaining you. Go see it to spend a very pleasant hour and a half.
