Beyond her overall genre-hopping mastery, there’s not much in Karyn Kusama’s filmography that could prepare viewers for The Invitation. The filmmaker came to prominence as writer-director of the indie sports drama Girlfight, went on to helm the disastrously received (and studio-meddled) sci-fi action movie Aeon Flux, and brought a stylish visual sensibility to future cult classic Jennifer’s Body. But at the time of The Invitation’s release 10 years ago, Jennifer’s Body was her second big-studio flop, rather than a well-regarded horror comedy, and Kusama had retreated back to independent cinema. She re-emerged with one of the most unusual horror movies of the era — one that would subsequently feel even more in step with the broader culture.
At first look, The Invitation feels like an early version of the kind of hushed grief-as-horror movie that became more popular in the years that followed its 2016 release. Will (Logan Marshall-Green) is still reeling from the accidental death of his young son with Eden (Tammy Blanchard). The couple subsequently divorced, and as the film begins, Will and his new partner Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) are on their way to attend a dinner party thrown by Eden and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman). Will obviously feels trepidation, but also wants to reunite with a friend group he hasn’t seen much of in recent years.
Once there — at the home he used to share with Eden, no less — Will feels unsettled almost immediately. Old memories are flooding back, but it seems like something else is amiss in the smiling, affirming, vaguely creepy relationship between Eden and David. They eventually discuss their participation in a grief-therapy group called The Invitation that sounds cultish, not least because it focuses on “choosing” happiness over dwelling on tragedy. Will grows increasingly suspicious, while much of the rest of the group feels more inclined toward polite acceptance, as if waiting patiently to talk behind the couple’s back later (or for the moment where their odd philosophy clicks).
Blanchard’s performance is remarkable for the way it implies unnerving changes to her character Eden. The audience sees only flashes of her previous self, not enough to get a sense of exactly what has shifted in her, yet she projects in her seeming serenity a subtle sense of menace, while remaining docile enough to maintain a passing resemblance to the Eden who Will remembers. That’s probably a credit to Marshall-Green, too, who conveys these changes in his own haunted reactions, while allowing for the possibility that Will remains too overwhelmed with grief to accurately assess the situation.
But for The Invitation to really linger as horror, Will has to be right that something is going on besides him being sad in his old house. Kusama makes great use of shallow focus and low lighting to keep the field of vision limited, creating the feeling that there’s something just out of sight, around some corner of this well-appointed Hollywood Hills home.
What lurks throughout most of the movie before a definitive third-act revelation is that Eden and David, who met while both were grieving, are not actually practicing radical acceptance of each other and their losses. They (and two more of their guests, previously unknown to the others) are involved with a literal death cult, preaching that the only way to let go of pain is to die — and then practicing that, too, as they attempt to kill off their friends so they may eventually join them in some form of afterlife.
While The Invitation plays well as an exploration of the consuming nature of grief, with Will realizing his pervasive sadness may actually be on the healthier end of what it can do to people, 10 years later it has other undertones. The way Eden and David talk about their conquering of grief, referring to it as a choice and describing it as a willful act, now echoes various “natural” health movements claiming that some combination of eating right and mindfulness can eliminate “toxins” without the help of medicine like vaccines. Just as real-life movements hawk increased longevity alongside a simultaneous willingness to accept an increased death rate from once-vanquished diseases like measles, the “Invitation” program promises an escape path from grief that runs through a whole lot more death. It’s especially fitting (and mordantly funny) that the movie depicts its acolytes as well-to-do Los Angelenos, a demographic presumably susceptible to sketchy wellness claims.
Obviously the movie’s cult is more overtly suicidal than various health or political movements that it recalls (or anticipated). At the same time, The Invitation now taps into a sense that we may actually be surrounded by various forms of death cultists, peddling “solutions” that could systematically destroy us rather than addressing the problems at hand. Eden, David, and their fellow followers even have symbology that mimics the dog-whistles of various MAHA or MAGA movements: a red lantern outside their house, lit up as a signal that their murder-suicide plans have been put into motion.
One of the scariest experiences of the past decade in the United States has been realizing the sheer amount of sway these fringe views have over our lives. (Recall that 2016 was a particularly crucial election year.) They may represent a minority view, but that doesn’t stop them from wreaking havoc on public health, or immigration policy, or international relations, or any number of areas. This increased dread is all over the final moments of The Invitation, when survivors witness red lantern lights dotting the Los Angeles landscape as screams cry out in the distance. The whole world hasn’t agreed to join a death cult, but they don’t need to. All it takes is some frighteningly committed believers to make their grief and grievances into the whole world’s problem.
The Invitation is currently streaming on Peacock, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.
