Girlfight and Jennifer’s Body director Karyn Kusama is back this year, returning to her low-budget roots with The Invitation, a taut psychological thriller which follows a dinner party with many twists and turns. We’ve heard the less the known is better, but if one would like to indulge further, a full-length trailer has now arrived, along with a great poster.
We said in our review at SXSW, “When you play in the midnight slot of a film festival nowadays, audiences can expect something to go horribly wrong within the world of the movie. So going into The Invitation, without even knowing what it is about, there’s the impending sense things aren’t going to turn out well. Yet even in that environment, it becomes painfully clear that director Karyn Kusama’s latest feature is going to make audiences outside of that context aware of the stakes. As the tension effectively builds and pay-off is pulled off with aplomb, The Invitation is a mostly effective small-scale thriller, despite some missteps along the way.”
Starring Logan Marshall-Green, Tammy Blanchard, Michiel Huisman, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Lindsay Burdge, John Carroll Lynch, Mike Doyle, Michelle Krusiec, Marieh Delfino, and Jay Larson, check out the full-length trailer below.
In this taut psychological thriller by Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body), the tension is palpable when Will (Logan Marshall-Green, Prometheus) shows up to his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard, Into the Woods) and new husband, David’s (Michiel Huisman, “Game of Thrones”) dinner party. The pair’s tragic past haunts an equally spooky present: Amid Eden’s suspicious behavior and her mysterious house guests, Will becomes convinced that his invitation was extended with a hidden agenda. Unfolding over one dark evening in the Hollywood Hills, The Invitation blurs layers of mounting paranoia, mystery, and horror until both Will-and the audience-are unsure what threats are real or imagined.
The Invitation opens April 8th in theaters and VOD.