The Invitation is a fun, albeit predictable vampire mystery

In my last post I reviewed the Canadian supernatural thriller I'll take your dead (2018), which I watched after it was reccomended to me by a friend of mine (and a review of which you can read here if you so wish). Why am I bringing this up? Well, pretty much because that same friend also reccomended me a little vampire film that (what's peculiar is the fact that she isn't a fan of vampire media at all, so if she reccomends me something within the subgenre, it'll probably be good), like many titles within the horror genre in recent years, mysteriously came and went without much fanfare, (which is strange, considering that most Dracula adaptations do atleast leave a teency mark on the history of pop culture) The Invitation (2022). The premise sounded phenomenally intriguing. An ominous mix of a psychogycal thriller and murder mystery set on a beautiful gothic estate and featuring vampires? It sounded like the perfect subversion of the already tried and true cliches and tropes that had quickly begun to form within the depth of the once fairly unique subgenre of vampire horror. Add in the hints to Bram Stoker's seminal novel (which is arguably my favorite work of gothic horror fiction of all time) dropped to the viewers in the marketing and I was fully onboard to open my wallet, take out my cash, drive down to the nearest movie theatre and give it a watch with a good bag of popcorn (naturally alone because most of my friends don't want to go to the movies with me).

Sadly, however, as it has happened to me many times when I desired to see an appealing sounding title on the big screen, I missed it. However, I was lucky enough to catch it on MAX (back then still known as HBO MAX) on one sizzling summer day, when I was in a perfect mood for a fun, slightly brainless horror film (it happens most of the time when my will to live perishes into thin air) and, despite the addmitedely lackluster critical and audience reception, I found the final product to be throughly entertaining with enough scares, atmosphere and tension to keep any slightly more well travelled horror fan satisfied. It may not have been the perfect movie, however, I'd still definetely rank it amongst my favorite titles of 2022, as, compared to a lot of horror movies I've reviewed on here lately, it has a lot going for it and, surprisingly, very little wasted potential. Thus, let us take a quick tour into the weird, dark and violent world of The Invitation, starting with...

(1) The Writing

Even if you haven't read Bram Stoker's genrebending classic (which, if the case, absolute shame on you, stop reading this crap right now and pick the damn book up) or have atleast seen the film's trailer, chances are, you'll find the film insanely predictable (as did I), as it does succumb to many cliches and tropes we've come to expect from the horror and thriller genres. This, however, did not make me enjoy the experiance any less, as, despite the film's utter lack of any sense of originality, it still manages to hold enough strenght to stand on it's own two impecably unoriginal and unememorable feet that it's not a completely forgettable or tortourous experiance. In fact, the cliches utilized within the script are actually some of my personal favorites, which made the overall experiance a lot more enjoyable for me as both a casual viewer and a slightly biased amateur critic.

Most more maintstream anglophonic horror films these days had really fallen on using the same old tried and true tropes and, whilst a LOT of them end up being poorly executed forgettable garbage very little, if anyone, talks about for longer than a week, it's refreshing to see a title, that, whilst definetely very cliche, atleast tries to do something most titles in the genre avoid, being afraid that being something more than cheesy messes comprised of jumpscares and an overeliance on extreme gore (which, to be fair, are some of the issues that also plague the title at hand, but, we'll adress that a bit later). The Invitation atleast does something I always appreciate in a horror film. As I've made it clear in my review of I'll take your dead, as much as I love my straightforward and basic bitch horror titles, I've always preffered the ones that tried to mix in a bit of something completely unrelated, like a melodrama or a murder mystery, in order to elevate the experiance and also draw in fans of non-horror genres. In the case of I'll take your dead, it was primarily a supernatural melodrama with a decent chunk of horror thrown in for good measure. In the case of The Invitation, we have an Agatha Christie style mystery (and, if you know me, then you know I do love me the works of the Queen of Crime) about a peculiar gothic estate whose inhabitants all seem to harbour some sort off a deep and dark secret (a good example of a similar narrative being done to a much better extent would be one of the best episodes of the magnificent horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives titled Alone, albeit, a very short time is actually spent on said estate there), and, just like with her bibliography, that's exactly what makes the plotline so addictive and easy for me to get sucked into.

However, being a certified Dracula fanatic, my favorite part of the whole experaince were certainly the tiny hints and references to the novel's story and characters sprinkled throught the plot. Other than the appearence of the legendary Romanian bloodsucker himself, the film also features appearences from characters such as R. M. Renfield (here using the cheeky alias of mister Fields), Lucy Westnera, as well as the surprisingly compliant Jonathan and Mina Harker, not to mention that the majority of the film's plot takes place in an around the grounds of the stunning abbey of New Carfax. Hell, one of the film's vampire characters even mentions that his occupation is that of a real estate agent. I mean, sure, to a casual viewer those references might not mean much (in fact, they might completely fly over their heads), however, to a detail obssesed nerd like me, it's like going to scrapyard and finding 15th century tapestries under a bunch of dirty rags. Also, whilst this might not be a reference per se, being a huge fan of the TV show Hannibal (2013-2015), I was smiling like a 12 year old schoolgirl when I saw that a small chunk of the film's plot was devoted to shrikes (tiny birds that kill small rodents, reptiles and insects and impale them onto the edges of their territory to establish an element of fear and dominance over predators, rivals and other potential threats). Also, also, seeing Sean Pertwee play a violent, grumpy British butler for the second time in his career (with his first role of this type being Alfred Pennyworth in Gotham, yet another one of my TV favorites) was an absolute joy (plus, I love me some Renfield).

Also, whilst this may not have been an intentional choice on the writer's part, I thought the movie, at times, was intended as an hommage to hokey, cheesy and very stylized approach films from the Hammer Horror era were known for using. If you're unfamiliar with the term, I gave a pretty good definition of it in my review of James McTeigue's The Raven (which you can read here), however, to put it bluntly, it reffers to to the style of horror filmmaking present within the filmogrpahy of the British production company Hammer, oftentimes featuring lavish sets and costumes and extensive and highly stylized scenes of graphic violence and usually either adapting a famous work of gothic literature (including Dracula, with Christopher Lee giving a performance of a lifetime as the iconic vampiric bloodsucker) or acting as a loose sequel to it's events. Given how The Invitation features a lot of these hallmarks, I saw it as a clear hommage to that particular style of filmmaking, albeit, with updated technology, however, I could be reading way too much into all of it and it's merely a very cheesy modern film whose cheesyness I'm trying my hardest to defend.

Now, that's not to say the writing is without it's faults.

The film was written by Blair Butler, whose mostly done work with less than stellar titles within the horror genre, such as the extremely tedious slasher Hell Fest (2018) and the impecably mediocre (albeit highley entertaining) supernatural mystery Polaroid (2019), however, she was involved with the cancelled too soon TV series Helstrom (2017), which, I retain, is the best thing to ever come out of the MCU (with, maybe, the exceptions of the first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones). Now, sure, out of all of her feature film works I've come across, The Invitation is, by far, the most competently written one, however, it, personally, flopped for me in one major aspect. As I said, I enjoy it when horror mixes up with other genres and subgenres from time to time, however, usually those genres need to work well together and neither should overshadow the other as to not alienate any members of your potential audience. For example, Stephen Criag Zahler's film Bone Tomahawk (2015) combines within itself the genres of horror and epic western, which results in a wonderfully dark and grim display of violence and terror amidst the arid and repulsive backdrop of the American frontier. Whilst it definetely isn't as good of a take on the trope of cannibals in the Wild West as, say, Ravenous (1999) was, but, you get the jist, as both films deliver equally as well both the tropes and themes of the western genre, as well as those of horror and thriller. So, what's the issue with The Invitation you might ask? Well, halfway through the film, Butler seems to have forgotten that she was writing a work within the horror genre and the film turns into what I can only describe as a romantic drama. Now, of course, there have been times where the combination of horror and romance works perfectly, with my favorite example, oddly enough, being yet another adaptation of Dracula, to be more precise, Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). The thing about that take on the story though, is that the romance in the film never overshadows the horror and vice versa, thus making for a timeless, highley enjoyable and rewatchable tale on both ends of the spectrum. Now, sure, The Invitation does come back to being horror in it's third act, but a good chunk of the second is based around the romance between the protagonist and the character of the count. Sure, we get an explanation as to why he's trying to seduce the lead in the climax, but, at the same time there's nothing ominous nor creepy about the romance scenes in the rest of the film. In fact, they're so generic and sanitized they feel much more like they belong in something distributed by Hallmark, then a freaking vampire flick. That's the point where the film began to drag for me and I was almost tempted to turn it off (...like a light switch. Just go click! It's a cool little Mormon trick!) or, atleast, press the majestic creation that is the fast forward button. Why hadn't I done this? I don't know, I'm a giant stickler, sue me.

The second problem I have with the film is the presence of two scenes which, whilst they don't neccesarily hurt the narrative as whole or anything, are still rather poor in execution and damage the film slightly in my critical gaze. In both scenes we see Dracula killing one of the unsuspecting maids whom his family not only hires to cook and clean the estate, but also to serve as food for him so that he may grow in power. Now, on it's own that's not really a bad concept, in fact, it's one I could certainly get behind, Hell, if they were short films on YouTube, I could even see myself enjoying them as they aren't bad on their own. The problem is, they serve very little purpose in the film's plot, other than to peddle the runtime, show that the family running the estate are shady and evil (even though we've seen examples of that being thrown around all over the place throught the film) and to add some extreme scenes of graphic violence. What's the matter you pussy? Can't handle a little gore? Well, maybe you shouldn't be watching horror movies then, hmmm?, you mini Urbanspooks might say, so, I am here to prove you wrong. No, I have no issues with gore in horror. I do, however, have issues with pointless usage of it, which is usually the case when the writer's convinced that the product isn't nearly scary or shocking enough, so, therefore, they should throw in a scene of someone getting their head bitten off so the audience realizes that what they're watching is indeed a horror film. If we were to cut these scenes out altogether and just have the character notice that one of the maids is gone the next morning, the reaction from the audience would have been a lot more schocking, thus making the eventual vampire twist all the more effective and give what's, admitedley, a pretty unscary movie, atleast some moments of geniune dread. In short, I'm not against horror relying on gore, but, all I'm saying is, there are a million different ways one can go about scaring their audience without neccesarily relying on it.

(2) The Atmosphere

In my review of I'll take your dead, I spent quite a bit of time discussing why a film's atmosphere matters, especially when it comes to horror, and, to it's credit, whilst The Invitation is far from being a great film, it's certainly a wonderfully atmospheric watch.

When it comes to adapting a work of gothic fiction, one of the main aspects that makes an adaptation succsesful in my eyes is how well does the film or show manage to recreate one of the main things that makes the source material stand out. And what would that be, you slimy nerd you?, you might ask. Well, constant reader, to answer that, we must first ask ourselves as to what exactly makes a work of gothic fiction worthy of that title?

When we think of gothic fiction lots of things commonly spring to mind. Massive medieval castles, abanndoned churchyards, unkept cemetaries, a plethora of both human and supernatural fiends that frighten our merry protagonists (usually scholars of the occult or unwary travelers), dark and stormy nights, deep forests where the light doesn't shine and so on and so forth. The main issue with gothic fiction is that it's one of those literary terms that's quite hard to fully nail down a clear set of tropes. The ones I just mentioned stem from it's English, Scottish, French and Irish branches (that said, they can be found in literary works outside of said countries as well, for example in Mykola Gogol's novella Viy or Đuro Sudeta's short story Mor). American gothic fiction authors (particularly those writing in it's subgenre of Southern gothic) usually set their stories in small towns instead of bustling metropolises and tend to incorporate weirder and more esoteric elements to their stories (from the classics like Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft to the more modern examples like Stephen King and Shirley Jackson). The term gothic can also be applied to many different types of literary fiction. The first titles that usually spring to one's mind are those of the gothic horror variety (which is a whole other can of worms in it's own right, containing a wide spectrum of various styles and subgenres, made extra confusing by the fact that it often crossbreeds with other styles of horror, such as cosmic horror, the grand guignol, etc.), however, we mustn't forget about the existence of the other branches of this absolute Yggradsil of a tree, such as gothic romance (Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Damme, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights), horror's common companion gothic mystery (Joseph Sheridan Le Faneau's The Evil Guest, Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin series) and, finally, gothic terror, gothic horror's more sublime and non-graphically violent and outward disgusting cousin (Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol). In short, gothic fiction is a collection of genres that act as mirrors into our fascination with the past. They're literary longings for a forgotten time of mysticism and superstition when the normal and abnormal seemed to coexist and cross paths on a daily basis, attempting to build a bridge between the mundane reality of the Now and the exciting and peculiar world of the Then.

Whilst The Invitation is far less violent and brutish than something like Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk: A Romance (believed by scholars to be the progentior of gothic horror as a literary genre, and a book I, surprisingly, hadn't read, althought I am quite aware of it's rather contraversial and messed up contents), given it's subject matter and execution, it's clearly intended to be a piece of English gothic horror (despite being American) and it manages to transalte all of it's afforementioned tropes quite well into a visual format. We got a huge manor with an accompanying estate surrounded by a thick forest, a shady rich family with supernatural secrets that runs it and the whole family literally starts out on a dark and stormy night. Now, of course, you can certainly have all of these elements and still flop spectacularly (for example, look at Dario Argento's miserable 2012 attempt at adapting Dracula to the big screen), however, The Invitation still manages to retain that incredibly specific vibe and sense of the macabre the genre has in it's literary form, that mainly being the fact that absolutely everything about the story is foreboding. Like I mentioned before, the film appears to be heading in a Hammer horror direction, which is equally as reflective in it's writing, as it is it's sets, vibe and atmosphere. Partially contributing to this factor is Dara Taylor's (whose previously mostly done TV work on titles such as Galavant, Supernatural, the 2018 reboot of Lost in Space) which fits the film's very specific tone and style perfectly. Everything is big, stylish, ravishing and very over the top, which, yes, clearly kills any spook factor because it removes a lot of the realism and relatability that are, in essence, exactly what makes horror as a genre scary, however, it manages to fit it perfectly with what were, arguably, the most commercially succesful and popular takes on the genre in the world of cinema for a very long period of time and, just like with it's predescessors, it's memorable over the topness and slight hints pointing towards sillyness, will probably be the reasons which will result with in the film being a cult classic in the future.

On a personal sidenote, the movie also has loads of visually stunning landscape porn, which is always a plus in my book and can sometimes mean quite a lot to me when looking at a piece of visual media. So, in short, it massively checks out on the visual and tone front.

(3) The Effects

As I'm sure my constant readers are well aware, I've been experiancing a plethora of CGI fatigue as of late. Not that I think that all CGI is bad (look at last year's D&D movie for example), however, as with animation, I have a very hard time relating, and therefore getting invested into, something I know isn't in front of the camera (with maybe the exception of motion capture since it kinda bridges the line between practical effects and CG) which is why I tend to lean more towards indie and non-English language films as of late, as they usually tend to incorporate practical effects far more often. Anyways, I'm rambling, where was I again? Ah, right, the CGI of The Invitation.

Ok, I'll be completely honest, the effects in this film aren't Oscar worthy and won't be winning any awards anytime soon. That said, if looked at in the light of being a possible hommage to Hammer horror, their cheesyness and the over the top nature work perfectly fine and even compliment the film's overall feel. They add to the weird and wild gothic aesthetic and even reminded me a bit of the true form of vampires in the French graphic novel Sherlock Holmes and the vampires of London (Sherlock Holmes et les vampires des Londres) which I remember reading quite a while back and enjoying it immensley, both as a fan of Sherlock Holmes and as a nerd for all things vampire related. This all just goes to show that, sometimes, a little cheesyness doesn't hurt, as long as you do it in moderation (take notes, horror writers).

(My apologies, this is the only effects shot I could find without any watermarks)

So, in the end, would I reccomend it?

Honestly, whilst the film itself is far from perfect, it makes for an enjoyable watch. If you don't go in expecting a smart, thought provoking and scary, however, still very fun and memorable cinematic experaince, then I do reccomend giving it a shot, especially if you're a fan of Dracula or vampires in general, as it has enough elements to keep the veterans of the genre satisfied. It's a perfectly inoffensive one time watch that won't linger much in your memory, but will provide you with a decent enough one off experiance to cool your inner goth with during the sizziling hot summer months.

Sources used:

Hogle, J. E.: Introduction: the Gothic in western culture in Hogle, J. E. (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Literature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002

Trailers: