¡QUÉ HORROR! 2016
Candidate #10
THE INVITATION
(March 2015)
While I wasn't particularly crazy about Karyn
Kusama’s previous genre efforts (the live action adaptation of Aeon Flux and Jennifer’s Body)*, her latest feature, The Invitation, is another matter entirely.
Working
from a screenplay by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (who’d previously worked with
her on Aeon Flux), Kusama crafts an
exquisite example of slow burn horror as a group of friends who haven’t seen
each other in a couple of years are brought back together by the titular
invitation, for a night of talk and drinks and a gradually escalating sense of wrongness.
Now,
given that that’s all you’ll get here in terms of what the film is about, if
seeing familiar genre faces makes you more comfortable, then the likes of John
Carroll Lynch, and Michiel Huisman (who’s been conspicuously absent of late
from Orphan Black, though is very
much present on Game of Thrones), and
Logan Marshall-Green, are here for the festivities.
Marshall-Green,
in particular, needs to be singled out, as he pretty much anchors the film’s
proceedings as Will, who is still dealing with the trauma of a personal
tragedy, and is the one most attuned to the wrongness
I made mention of earlier.
So,
yeah. The Invitation.
RSVP,
regrets only.
*
I’ve still to find the opportunity to see Kusama’s feature debut, Girlfight, so, who knows, she might have
kicked my film geek a$$ really early on, if only I’d caught it when it was
first released…
(The Invitation OS’ courtesy of
impawards.com & aintitcool.com.)