303. The Invitation; movie review

 

THE INVITATION

Cert 15

104 mins

BBFC advice: Contains strong horror, violence, bloody images

Who needs another hackneyed vampire movie?

The Invitation is bloodsucking by numbers - it is as if its makers are trying to tick off every cliche of the genre.

And yet it has tripled its budget outlay with its box office returns. I despair.

Jessica M. Thompson's movie stars Nathalie Emmanuel as Evie - a disgruntled American artist who has to make ends meet by waitressing.

By a strange fluke, her best friend (Courtney Taylor) persuades her to sign up for a family history site and it turns out that she has an English cousin (Hugh Skinner).

They arrange a meeting and he invites her to a family wedding across the pond. Obviously, she accepts despite knowing next to nothing about him and absolutely zero about the other guests.

The giveaway to anyone who has ever watched a horror film is that the venue is a creepy mansion in the middle of the country.

It also has the most brusque butler (Sean Pertwee) ever seen.

Nevertheless, our heroine falls for the young and eligible lord of the manor (Thomas Doherty). It turns out to be a very bad match.

The Invitation is a combination of lots of old ideas, held together by bad acting. 

I presume we are meant to empathise with Evie but, frankly, I found her so dim-witted that I was inwardly shouting at the screen.

Meanwhile, Doherty's supposedly evil character is more than a bit wet.

But, most of all, I had an overriding sense of "been there, seen that."

Reasons to watch: Reasonably creepy

Reasons to avoid: Too many old ideas

Laughs: None

Jumps: One

Vomit: None

Nudity: Very brief

Overall rating: 3.5/10

Did you know? The word vampire was first mentioned in the chronicles of 18th-century Confucian scholar Lê Quý Đôn, who spoke of a creature that lives among humans, but stuffs its toes into its nostrils at night and flies by its ears into houses with pregnant women to suck their blood.

The final word. Jessica M. Thompson: "We’ve done Dracula so many times; let’s do the brides. There are new stories we want to see and want to know about, and we use that as a jumping-off point. It’s more of an inspiration point than trying to stay true to the book or retell it." Bloody Disgusting

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