The Invitation (2022)

“Everyone’s dying to meet you.” – Oliver

Summer 2022, we were looking for a film to tag on to a screening of Beast to make a double bill (in hindsight, just as well we did because Beast really sucked). The only other movie around on the day that offered any possibility at all was this one. It seemed to be a horror, so that was okay. But we hadn’t checked out a trailer or a synopsis so I was literally going in blind. Not a clue what lay ahead. Sometimes, that’s best. We live in a world of internet spoilers and trailers that kind of miss the point of teasing the film by showing you important plot points. So, it’s hard to be surprised any more. (Having said that, I really miss the heyday of horror and sci-fi movie magazines like Starlog, Fangoria and Gorezone which would put films like this one firmly on my radar but without giving the whole game away.)

The Invitation seemed to suddenly appear at the cinema, and was gone after a couple of weeks, it has yet to be released on physical media in the UK, despite being available just about everywhere else (I imported mine). It might, by now be available on streaming. But its sudden disappearance is a shame, it’s an entertaining movie that deserves an audience.

The film opens in a gothic mansion, with a woman committing suicide by hanging herself while holding on to a heavy sculpture for added weight to ensure the job done.

The scene then moves to New York, where Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) is working a catering job at an event to make some extra money. She’s a struggling, starving artist with barely two cents to rub together. She has recently lost her mother, and has no other relatives as far as she’s aware. Taking a goodie bag home from the event, she finds a free trial to a DNA based ancestry tracing service and discovers that she actually has a family – living in England, and one of them is in New York on business and they arrange to meet.

Oliver (Hugh Skinner) is charming and as effusively British as British gets. The family is loaded, they live in a mansion and she’s invited to a big family wedding, which he touts as the wedding of the century.

It’s Britain, it’s a gothic mansion, so of course there are apparitions, things do indeed go bump in the night, or at least get bumped off, there’s an apparition – because no stately home in the UK is complete without one, there’s a sinister butler (played by Sean Pertwee, who channels a darker version of his Alfred from the Gotham TV series) and among the weird as hell relatives, there’s a dark family secret or two. One of the dark family secrets is Evie herself, who is the lone black woman in a family of stiff backed, whiter than white Brits stinking of class and old money. It’s explained that Evie’s great grandmother had a scandalous affair in the 1920s with a black footman.

As for the other dark family secret…

Some of the maids hired for the event go missing in the night, Evie meets the completely charming Lord of the Manor, Walter De Ville (Thomas Doherty) and soon falls under his spell. By soon, I mean practically as soon as she sees him.

So, we have the gathering of the clan, but there’s no sign of the bride and groom, which even by British upper-class standards, is a little odd. Until the formal dinner where they are to make their entrance and the announcement is made that the bride and groom are actually De Ville and Evie - and here comes the second, maybe darker family secret, they toast the announcement in the blood of a maid whose throat is slit – they’re all vampires. And she’s been lured right into their midst.

When I saw the film at the cinema, it all dawned on my that the clues were there all the time. What I thought were easter egg homages like the mansion being called New Carfax, the butler being named Renfield… it was all there. Walter De Ville is revealed in all his glory as Dracula himself, and the family is pleased to have some fresh blood in it.

From this point, the film kicks up a gear and becomes more of a classic, old fashioned traditional vampire movie – the kind I didn’t think they made any more. No angsty teen vampires brooding, these are feral and hungry with no time for navel gazing introspection or pouting. They take a bit of staking to put down. Fortunately, Evie is up to the challenge.

This good, fun movie may not be to everybody’s taste because traditional vampires could be considered corny and cliché riddled, and I’ve since found out that it was greeted with a bit of hostility and contempt by critics on its release (obviously I wasn’t one of those) but sometimes it’s nice to see the old, tried and trusted horror tropes make a triumphant reappearance and it’s especially satisfying to see the Count himself, still evidently living (?) his best life in an English mansion.