Spook Out! Day 23 ~ The Invitation (2015)

Netflix Says...
"A man accepts an invitation to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife, an unsettling affair that reopens old wounds and creates new tensions."

I Say...
Look, just stay out of the Hollywood Hills. Bad juju there, man. Bad. Juju.

Horror Type...
Psychological, Thriller

Main Players...
Logan Marshall-Green as Will (Just-'Cause-He's-Paranoid-Don't-Mean-They-Ain't-Out-To-Get Him)
Tammy Blanchard as Eden (Dangerously Smiley Hostess)
Michiel Huisman as David (Creepily Insistent Host)

I liked...

• the focus on Will and how the film places the viewer right there with him in his grief, isolation, and worry
• the superbly-built atmosphere, which went from subdued sadness to disturbing to uneasy to dread-filled to WHAT THE FREAKIN' HECK?!?
• how the filmmakers trust the audience to pick up the hints they skillfully blend into the narrative, regarding backstory as well as what's fixing to go down
• the tension as the party vibe shifts from the alcohol-fueled banal to a sobering weirdness as people behave peculiarly and revelations are...uh...revealed
• the occasional moments of understated humor that let me catch a breath without taking me out of the story

The Meh...
Though it's a pretty successful slow-burn of a film, I reckon about ten minutes could be shaved off the 1 hour, 40 minutes runtime without doing any harm to the story.

Would I recommend it...?
100%, noting that most of the scary stuff is in the third act and not "horror-movie scary" until really the bitter end (and even then, not a jump-scare-type scary, but good old psychological horror).

Miscellany...

One of the most terrifying moments for me was flipping John Carroll Lynch's gently menacing delivery of, "You are out of line." Especially 'cause you get the feeling there's a LOT he could do to get you back in line and none of it's pleasant.

Ratings...

My Grade: A-
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: Tomatometer=88%, Audience Score=70%

Details, Schmeetails...

I Watched The Invitation on Netflix (the Rotten Tomatoes page linked above provides links to other host sites)

The Invitation's IMDb Page

The Invitation's Wikipedia Page (Contains Spoilers)

This concludes day 23 of