Regrets Only

A movie you've never heard of starring Lance Henriksen doesn't come with high expectations. Especially when it's streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Quick Plot: Roland Levy, a successful novelist, invites a batch of his close but incredibly flawed pals to his island for a dinner party. After sharing some very J. Peterman-esque anecdotes about his recent adventures recovering from poison in Africa, Roland reveals his real party favor.

It's poison, obviously.

Roland is convinced that the only way forward is to die, especially when you have skeletons in your closet that need to be cleaned out for good. 

What follows is a rather drab 90 minutes about unlikable people suffering from out of focus hallucinations. For the women, most involve sexual assault. For the men, lots of daddy issues. 

Throughout it all, Lance Henriksen owns the screen with an air of relaxed charisma. He's the only reason to watch this otherwise slog. Maybe it's not The Invitation's fault that it was, 20+ years after its release, marketed as a thriller. If you approached this film expecting a middling drama, it...well, it still wouldn't be good, but at least it wouldn't necessarily feel anticlimactic. 

Filmmaker Pat Bermel has a long history in the film business, though this stands as his only directorial credit. Outside of Henriksen, the cast is vaguely recognizable (hey! it's a lady from Decoys, says one of the few people who remembers the Canadian movies Decoys). No one is terrible, no one is great. The fact that their characters are all wealthy jerks certainly doesn't help.

The Invitation does ultimately go somewhere. It's just not an entertaining destination. 

High Points

Gotta love that dog's recovery wardrobe!

Low Points

I'll be nice and blame a good deal of The Invitation's ugliness on the print. There's a very specific visual graininess endemic to these kinds of low budget movies of the early aughts era, and it makes a blah movie even less pleasing to watch

Lessons Learned

The side effects of elephant birth control is that female elephants become really aroused 

All the money in the world apparently does not buy you likable friends

Sellers aren't writers

Rent/Bury/Buy

I can't imagine where the audience is for The Invitation. It's unpleasant for most of its runtime before ending on a note of pure syrup. Lance Henriksen completists can find it on Prime.