The Invitation (2022)

Review of The Invitation, directed by Jessica M. Thompson

I am going to admit this before I start this review: I have AMC A List, which means I have an AMC subscription and can see three movies a week for a small fee, and I kept seeing the trailer for this movie over and over again when I was going to the movies.

I had absolutely no interest in seeing this movie because I thought the trailer looked like something I wouldn’t want to waste my time on. But because I love movies, I ended up seeing this when it was added to streaming platforms out of a morbid curiosity for how the movie actually unfolds.

I am glad though I did not see these in theaters; I would not have wanted to see this on a big screen. Much love to the cast and writers, they’re talented and all, but this one just doesn’t work.

Let’s go into the review.

An American artist goes to meet her long-lost relative in England and ends up married to Dracula.

At the beginning of the movie, our protagonist, Evie, is in an art MFA and works on the side at a catering company. Her best friend at work is introduced, and we learn pretty quickly that Evie is related to some long-lost relative in England. The guy’s white, and her friend warns Evie about meeting him.

They meet anyways over dinner, and he invites her to England to come to a wedding. He claims that everyone is excited to meet her, and while she initially is hesitant, she gives in and agrees to go to England for this wedding.

I don’t know why she thought this was a good idea in the moment without some kind of evidence this event was happening, as the guy literally could have been out to kill her (which he kind of is), but the movie decides this logic is what we’re going with right now.

We also learn the secret behind Evie’s family line. Her great-grandmother, Emmaline, lived in the manor but fell in love with a black worker, and she ran away to be in love. We later learn that this story isn’t exactly the truth, as Emmaline actually ran away because she was going to be married off.

So she heads to England, and when she arrives at the manor she meets the charming Walter, who is the lord of the manor. We also meet the Maids of Honor, Victoria and Lucy. At night Evie increasingly begins to see apparitions of her great-grandmother, and, at the same time, fights an increasing attraction to Walter.

Maids are beginning to disappear as a shadowy figure attacks them while they’re in places like the basement, but no one seems to notice or observe this. Evie becomes unsettled, though, when she realizes Walter knows way too much about her and that he definitely stalked her online before arriving.

The cherry on top of the stalking occurs at a rehearsal dinner. Walter introduces Evie as the bride to be, and she begins to freak out in front of all of the guests. Lucy, Walter, and Victoria reveal themselves to be vampires after a maid’s neck is slit at the table so they can have fresh blood, making Evie even more freaked out and she tries to escape.

Mrs. Swift, the maid who was assigned to her, helps her try to escape, but is killed in the process of doing so. Evie, in the outside world, tries to run into an old couple’s home, but they drug her and take her back to the manor. As it turns out, a lot of people and wealthy families in this part of England are in on Walter’s scheme.

Thus begins the wedding, where Evie turns into a vampire, sets Walter on fire, and kills Lucy and Victoria. With one of the maids who I definitely thought was dead before this moment, she ends up killing Walter, who was Dracula all this time, reverting back to a human.

The final scene consists of her and her best friend from the company getting ready to take down the long lost cousin who basically sold Evie into the situation. I say this entire sequence moves like a fever dream, as everything happens quickly and without any reason. Like he literally just says he’s Dracula then she pushes him into the flames.

My question is how the heck can she just randomly become human again? We don’t spend enough time in this world to learn the logistics and while I assumed this is because we’re in Evie’s head, she doesn’t know how vampires work and their world, but then it just feels sloppy when it comes to writing.

The same deal is with Lucy. I’m sure she watched other girls get murdered or sold off to Walter but suddenly she feels sympathy for Evie. It feels like a self-insert fanfiction without the usual romance, where Evie is the chosen one and has save the world from the big, bad vampires.

Overall Thoughts

All in all, this movie felt like a plethora of tropes and I think it doesn’t really add much to the genre as a whole. It rehashes things we already know about vampires, and the plot twists are so predictable they’re not even exciting at all.

I genuinely found myself bored while watching this movie too because the characters feel formulaic and static. I don’t care much for Evie as a character to invest in her story more than I already have to, which is why I think this story feels flat. The stakes also don’t feel high, making the urgency move at a snail’s pace.

Certain details, too, like Evie being an MFA student in art could add so much more to the conversations but that’s completely dropped after she goes to England. All in all, this story feels incomplete and hollow to me, which is why I cannot unfortunately recommend it.

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