The Invitation (Karyn Kusama)

[Dead & Messed Up]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v179/deadandmessedup/invitation_zpssnpkcats.jpg

[Dead & Messed Up]

So I kind of loved this.

More thoughts when I'm not at work.

[Ezee E]

I saw this months ago and thought it felt like something from college. Only one person speaking at a time (at a dinner party), poor acting, and just especially bad.

[transmogrifier]

The last 30 seconds makes the movie seem more interesting in retrospect than it actually is. Too many fake outs.

[Ezee E]

Agreed on the dull dinner party and people looking like they don't know each other. SO bad.

And again, what makes it so dull is there's only one conversation at a time. No Altman-like conversations with everyone interacting, which is what would really happen. This thing bored me that it took me three times to finish it all.

[Irish]

No Altman-like conversations with everyone interacting, which is what would really happen.

This is true but I figured it's a low budget production (Blumhouse, I think?) and so staging and editing that sort of scene would be an insane pain in the ass.

(And it'd be easier to forgive the conceit of one-convo-at-a-time if any of those convos interested me at all)

[megladon8]

Irish despite your overall "nay" it sounds like there's enough there to warrant checking it out.

I also had no idea this was a Blumhouse flick. I like their stuff (generally).

Thanks for the thoughts and good to see to back!

[Dead & Messed Up]

Yeah, I'm surprised by the negative reactions in here-- I figured there'd be a more even spread given the critical appraisal and how hard it hit me. 40 minutes in, I had to pause and walk around my apartment to calm myself down, the film was making me so anxious.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I will say this: I loved the vapidity and the self-centeredness of the "What do you want?" game. Like... that is just so fucking perfect to me, that that's the kind of game these kinds of people would play. Like, "I want this thing, therefore I deserve it," which is an efficient way to both sketch a bunch of characters and cut to the underlying theme of how the party hosts are so stunted that they favor immediate gratification (of a sort) over the hard work of earning a thing (which is the thing the movie is about).

If I rewatch, though, I'll keep an eye on what you guys are saying about the conversations being one-after-the-other.

[Mal]

This movie reminds me why I'm perfectly fine not getting invites to dinner parties my coworkers have.

[Dukefrukem]

Wow. Lot of harsh criticism here. You found a potential slow burn thriller THAT boring? I kinda loved this. I'm more annoyed at what appears to be an increase in cult films as of late. Or films that involve giant LA homes. (the Gift) Or films that revolve around a dinner (You're Next) then what is talked about around the party. I do agree what is lacking here is the dialog. Get Quentin Tarantino to write this screenplay and it's probably the best film of 2016.

[Grouchy]

I liked this. I wouldn't call it brilliant and it's true that it shows its low-budget roots sometimes in the sound design department, but I'd rather see a mediocre film try for something different than a manufactured package which is technically sound.

[dreamdead]

I think of this film as a companion piece to Don't Breathe. Each buttresses up paper-thin characters with skillful subjective framing--the constancy of questioning the lead's psychological distress is undone by John Carroll Lynch's presence, since he basically exists as confirmation that this is going somewhere bad. That said, I think Kusama utilizes the tension from the locked house well, and the first 40 minutes, before the film tips its hand too much, works as a study of paranoia and mistrust.

I just wish the characters, rather than the filmmaking, had something interesting to say. As such, the ending here felt very much like Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Charisma. That's a good thing, though I agree with transmogrifier that I wish the film had something more interesting to say in that moment.

[TGM]

I'm only about 15 minutes into this thing, and already the sound editing is driving me absolutely insane. Seriously, I'd expect this sort of sound editing from someone closer to my level of filmmaking, your typical no-budget "trying to get their start in filmmaking" production, someone who's more or less still learning. But on this level? Jesus christ, I can hear every single time they switch to a different sound take, not just between shots, but within the same shot even! And worse is when they abruptly cut it off right at the end of a sentence. They did absolutely nothing to smooth the sound out and make it flow seamlessly together so that you can't even tell they're using multiple sound files (you know, like any real movie should). This is the sort of mistake I made on my very first short film, and learned how to adjust in later projects. But at the level that this film is at? Yeah, that's fucking unacceptable. It's not the sort of thing that you're even supposed to think about when watching a movie, and I can't recall ever experiencing this issue outside of those aforementioned no-budget films, but actually hearing it in a movie like this is wildly distracting. I can tolerate this from nobodies who are still learning uploading their personal film projects onto youtube or some shit, but not in something like this that's supposed to be far more polished and professionally presentable. I'll see how much longer I can stand this, but I'm tempted to give up on the movie before it's even begun. Unbelievable...

[TGM]

Ok, so I finished it. Between all of the movies about grief from 2016, I dunno which was worse, this or Collateral Beauty, but this movie was fucking terrible. :|

[Irish]

I'm only about 15 minutes into this thing, and already the sound editing is driving me absolutely insane. Seriously, I'd expect this sort of sound editing from someone closer to my level of filmmaking, your typical no-budget "trying to get their start in filmmaking" production, someone who's more or less still learning. But on this level? Jesus christ, I can hear every single time they switch to a different sound take, not just between shots, but within the same shot even! And worse is when they abruptly cut it off right at the end of a sentence. They did absolutely nothing to smooth the sound out and make it flow seamlessly together so that you can't even tell they're using multiple sound files (you know, like any real movie should). This is the sort of mistake I made on my very first short film, and learned how to adjust in later projects. But at the level that this film is at? Yeah, that's fucking unacceptable. It's not the sort of thing that you're even supposed to think about when watching a movie, and I can't recall ever experiencing this issue outside of those aforementioned no-budget films, but actually hearing it in a movie like this is wildly distracting. I can tolerate this from nobodies who are still learning uploading their personal film projects onto youtube or some shit, but not in something like this that's supposed to be far more polished and professionally presentable. I'll see how much longer I can stand this, but I'm tempted to give up on the movie before it's even begun. Unbelievable...

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to TGM again."

This was a good post. I am embarrassed that I didn't notice any sound issues during my watch.

[Skitch]

A great ending can't make up for an annoying rest of the journey.

[TGM]

Ok, so I finished it. Between all of the movies about grief from 2016, I dunno which was worse, this or Collateral Beauty, but this movie was fucking terrible. :|

To expand on my thoughts, I'd have to say this was worse than Collateral Beauty. That movie was at least bad in an interesting, bat shit sort of way. This movie, however, was just amateur hour all around. In addition to its terrible sound design, the movie was lazily written, poorly acted, and just honestly poorly directed all around.

I, too, noticed very quickly how they kept having these aside one on one interactions throughout, despite the film taking place in a group setting, and it reached a point where it was honestly eye-roll worthy. Seriously, if you can't handle this many characters, I dunno, maybe cut down on the number of characters? Combine some of them into one, perhaps? But clearly this movie had no clue how to juggle a, er, "large" cast, and so we got this clumsy mess.

And I'd also say that the fact that only the lead seems to be really noticing and acknowledging all of the blatantly weird shit going on is just completely false. The movie should have either been more subtle throughout, so that it wasn't nearly so obvious and there could be a legitimate argument that he's merely being paranoid (imagine that movie!). Or the others who attended should have also been shown to be similarly freaked out. But having every one more or less just be like, "Huh, well that's odd, but I'm sure you're still cool *SHRUG*" was just frustrating and, quite frankly, bullshit throughout. Again, clumsy and lazy in execution, and all boils down to the shit script and even worse direction.

And I'll also agree that John Carroll Lynch's presence also more or less spells everything out for us. It was the movie going a step too far, to its detriment. The weird girl who nobody else knew was good enough, and the way she acted, where she was clearly not quite right in the head, could've on its own added just enough of a concern, while still believably making the characters on screen (and more importantly, us the viewer) think that perhaps something's not quite right, but be able to shrug it off as nothing they should be too overly concerned about, because perhaps we're just over-thinking it. Lynch, however, brings far too calm and deliberate a presence that feels nothing but immediately suspicious, and that suspicious feeling never diverts into any other direction. His monologue may be the worst scene in the entire movie for this very reason. "Fuck subtlety" is apparently this movie's motto. How is that one girl the only one who decided it was time to leave at that point?

The fact that I didn't ever care or feel the least bit tense when shit finally hit the fan at the end tells you everything. Nothing about what happened felt shocking. Again, it just felt overly obvious, and made the movie and every single character (save our lead) look completely stupid for trying to pretend like it could possibly go in any other route.

The stuff surrounding his grief over his son were the only parts that sort of worked, and showed that there was potential for something decent here. But the all around clumsy, terrible, insulting, and amateurish execution completely blunder every last bit of that potential.

[Ezee E]

I'm only about 15 minutes into this thing, and already the sound editing is driving me absolutely insane. Seriously, I'd expect this sort of sound editing from someone closer to my level of filmmaking, your typical no-budget "trying to get their start in filmmaking" production, someone who's more or less still learning. But on this level? Jesus christ, I can hear every single time they switch to a different sound take, not just between shots, but within the same shot even! And worse is when they abruptly cut it off right at the end of a sentence. They did absolutely nothing to smooth the sound out and make it flow seamlessly together so that you can't even tell they're using multiple sound files (you know, like any real movie should). This is the sort of mistake I made on my very first short film, and learned how to adjust in later projects. But at the level that this film is at? Yeah, that's fucking unacceptable. It's not the sort of thing that you're even supposed to think about when watching a movie, and I can't recall ever experiencing this issue outside of those aforementioned no-budget films, but actually hearing it in a movie like this is wildly distracting. I can tolerate this from nobodies who are still learning uploading their personal film projects onto youtube or some shit, but not in something like this that's supposed to be far more polished and professionally presentable. I'll see how much longer I can stand this, but I'm tempted to give up on the movie before it's even begun. Unbelievable...

Absolutely agree.

[Irish]

I agree with a lot of your points, TGM, especially about the implausibility of the plot and the actor's delivery, and that some of the characters could have been merged (most of them play out as typical horror-movie fodder at the end).

This one I quibble with:


I, too, noticed very quickly how they kept having these aside one on one interactions throughout, despite the film taking place in a group setting, and it reached a point where it was honestly eye-roll worthy. Seriously, if you can't handle this many characters, I dunno, maybe cut down on the number of characters? Combine some of them into one, perhaps? But clearly this movie had no clue how to juggle a, er, "large" cast, and so we got this clumsy mess.

Since she's working from a single location that's somewhat cramped, she divided up the action into "French scenes (http://study.com/academy/lesson/french-scene-in-plays-definition-breakdown.html)." (The most famous modern example of this style is probably 12 Angry Men.)

I think she did a good job of it; the movie could have been a lot less visually interesting than it was given the entire setting is just another LA house in the hills.

[TGM]

I agree with a lot of your points, TGM, especially about the implausibility of the plot and the actor's delivery, and that some of the characters could have been merged (most of them play out as typical horror-movie fodder at the end).

This one I quibble with:



Since she's working from a single location that's somewhat cramped, she divided up the action into "French scenes (http://study.com/academy/lesson/french-scene-in-plays-definition-breakdown.html)." (The most famous modern example of this style is probably 12 Angry Men.)

I think she did a good job of it; the movie could have been a lot less visually interesting than it was given the entire setting is just another LA house in the hills.

I think the issue here is less a matter of the location, and more a matter of the group environment and lack of multiple perspectives, despite there being so many present. If the movie wasn't limited to a single point of view, I don't think this aspect would've stood out as nearly so glaring. If we traded off between different pairs having their little one-on-one chats, it might've felt more natural. But as is, the movie feels like everyone is just constantly waiting on the sidelines for their chance to tag back into the film and have their one-on-one with our protagonist, and it does this so much that it becomes noticeable and ultimately makes the movie feel disjointed, particularly given the group setting.

[Irish]

If the movie wasn't limited to a single point of view, I don't think this aspect would've stood out as nearly so glaring [...] But as is, the movie feels like everyone is just constantly waiting on the sidelines for their chance to tag back into the film and have their one-on-one with our protagonist, and it does this so much that it becomes noticeable and ultimately makes the movie feel disjointed, particularly given the group setting.

Ahhhhhh, okay. That's a good point, and I agree wholeheartedly. It strikes me -- and this might be parsing things a little too closely -- that the lack of viewpoints is a script problem, not directorial one. That's a little tricky to parse, too, because what you're talking about would have made it into a completely different movie.

AFAIK, this was a work for hire gig, not one of those indie-dream-projects, so Kusama probably didn't have much control and had to shoot what was handed to her. That sounds like I'm defending the picture, but I'm really not. I had many of the same problems with it that you did, but the direction wasn't one of them.

[TGM]

Ahhhhhh, okay. That's a good point, and I agree wholeheartedly. It strikes me -- and this might be parsing things a little too closely -- that the lack of viewpoints is a script problem, not directorial one. That's a little tricky to parse, too, because what you're talking about would have made it into a completely different movie.

AFAIK, this was a work for hire gig, not one of those indie-dream-projects, so Kusama probably didn't have much control and had to shoot what was handed to her. That sounds like I'm defending the picture, but I'm really not. I had many of the same problems with it that you did, but the direction wasn't one of them.

No you're right, that example is definitely a script issue, and wasn't necessarily what I had in mind when referring to it being poorly directed. The direction criticism has more so has to do with the lack of a subtler approach, making things obvious to the point where the lead, who is supposed to come across as paranoid, instead comes across as the only one actually using his brain and making logical sense. That aspect is a directorial issue. You can retain what's on the page but direct it in such a way where the scenes play out in a more neutral manner, where it's not so glaringly obvious that something is definitely awry. Give little hints here or there, but otherwise have everyone act more or less normal, just enough to where we can reasonably question whether or not this is heading in the direction we think it's heading. Don't just make the main character feel paranoid, make us, the viewer, feel paranoid for jumping to the same conclusions that he is. Instead, with the way this movie is directed, I never felt paranoid, I felt annoyed that nobody else was seeing what was so glaringly obvious.