From the financier to the cast to the distributor, you need a lot of people on the same page to make a film this mysterious work.
The Invitation is one of the creepier slow-burn thrillers you’re liable to see this year, and probably any other. It’s full of the sort of Hitchcockian buildup of tension that few contemporary thrillers have the patience for, taking a creepy scenario—an invitation from the protagonist’s ex-wife to a dinner party at the house they lived in together before the death of their child—and wringing every ounce of drama out of the discomfort that would come up in that situation. The entire film is about letting the viewer know that something is wrong, but delaying the reveal of exactly what that is for as long as possible—and getting into a position to tell that story in that way is something it took director Karyn Kusama a long time to do.
