Drafthouse Films has brought online the full trailer for the upcoming psychological thriller The Invitation. Directed by Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body), The Invitation will hit theaters and VOD April 8.
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’ is a suspense-drama about people whose lives are in crisis,” says Kusama of the project. “Working from a tradition of grown-up genre films like ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘Let the Right One In,’ the film takes stylistic cues from paranoid thrillers like ‘Klute’ and from the contained staging of actors in ‘High and Low.’ From the first frame to the last, the film builds on an increasing sense of dread and anxiety, in which the growing fears and emotional doubt of our main character, Will, act as a tightening of the screws for the audience. Do we believe in his fears, or dismiss them as even some of his oldest friends do? Does Will’s grief separate him from the reality in front of him, or is it bringing his reality into sharper relief? In seeing the world largely from Will’s unstable point of view, the audience is asking, who is truly to be feared in this group? Who—or what—is genuinely dangerous?”
The Invitation also stars Emayatzy Corinealdi (Middle of Nowhere) and John Carroll Lynch (Zodiac), and was written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (Ride Along, Clash of the Titans).
The Invitation is a new psychological thriller from Girlfight and Jennifer’s Body director Karyn Kusama.
