The Invitation (2022)
I was so ready to like this. I will tolerate quite a lot of hokeyness for a fun vampire or zombie movie. But this was about an hour of build up, which mostly consisted of lame YA-romance movie dialogue and even lamer jump scares before it actually got around to being a vampire movie. Then it was moderately fun for about 15 minutes. But overall, just not fun enough. There are a few nods to Dracula, like setting it in Whitby (where not a single person has a Yorkshire accent) and giving a few characters Dracula names, and I think I caught a reference to The Hunger as well, but that was something they could have really run with but didn't quite.
One problem with this film is that it seemed to think it was Get Out, but it just wasn't anywhere near as clever. There was no attempt at subtlety, ambiguity or any kind of moral conflict. Everything about the story is obvious, and yet on several occasions it employs explanatory flashbacks to things we've already seen, just in case we can't put two and two together. It also couldn't settle on a point of view, which irked me.
Overall, disappointing. And my expectations were fairly low.
I was so ready to like this. I will tolerate quite a lot of hokeyness for a fun vampire or zombie movie. But this was about an hour of build up, which mostly consisted of lame YA-romance movie dialogue and even lamer jump scares before it actually got around to being a vampire movie. Then it was moderately fun for about 15 minutes. But overall, just not fun enough. There are a few nods to Dracula, like setting it in Whitby (where not a single person has a Yorkshire accent) and giving a few characters Dracula names, and I think I caught a reference to The Hunger as well, but that was something they could have really run with but didn't quite.
One problem with this film is that it seemed to think it was Get Out, but it just wasn't anywhere near as clever. There was no attempt at subtlety, ambiguity or any kind of moral conflict. Everything about the story is obvious, and yet on several occasions it employs explanatory flashbacks to things we've already seen, just in case we can't put two and two together. It also couldn't settle on a point of view, which irked me.
Overall, disappointing. And my expectations were fairly low.