Hello everyone! I’d been very curious about a new movie on Amazon Prime Video. Had it on my watchlist for a minute and I decided to watch it without really knowing anything about it, let alone having heard about it before. It’s called The Invitation. If you like horror, folklore, and romance, strap in because you’re in for a treat!
So, The Invitation is about a girl named Evie Jackson, played by Nathalie Emmanuel. It starts out with Evie and her friend, Grace (Courtney Taylor), working an event through the catering business they work at. Grace manages to snag a swag bag from the event and gives it to Evie. Inside it is a DNA kit from the company that put on the event. Having lost both her parents, and having no siblings, Evie gets curious and decides to use the DNA kit to see if she can find any relatives. She gets lucky and finds a cousin who reaches out to her.
Evie and her cousin, Oliver (Hugh Skinner), meet up for coffee in her hometown, New York. He tells her about a family wedding that’s coming up that she should attend in England, where the family is from. He’s in town on family business. She insists that she can’t afford a trip right now and he insists on paying for it. The family would love to meet her. Eventually she agrees to fly halfway across the world to meet this newfound family to attend “the wedding of the century” according to Cousin Oliver.
From the moment Evie gets to the Carfax estate things seem odd. She accidentally bumps into one of the maids, Diya, carrying glassware and the butler is very rude to her until he finds out she’s the “special guest”. This is when she meets Lord De Ville (Thomas Doherty). He becomes flirty and starts to treat her differently. Spoils Evie with gorgeous gowns, tries to make her fall in love with him. Oliver assures her that she isn’t related to Lord De Ville. She eventually starts to give in.
Meanwhile, maids are disappearing left and right. They’re given a task and while doing those tasks they are taken by some creature with claws. Evie sees the creature in her room above her bed trying to get to her. Lord De Ville offers to stay with Evie until she falls asleep after being scared senseless in her room. The lady of the house has also just recently passed, although she appears young.
Evie is then invited to join Viktoria (Stephanie Corneliussen) and Lucy (Alana Boden) to a spa day for the bridal party, even though Evie isn’t in the bridal party. Viktoria swims naked in a pool while the rest of the girls get facials and a manicure. Evie gets startled while getting her nails and cuticles trimmed and the manicurist cuts her finger. Viktoria gets out of the pool and without skipping a beat, takes Evie’s finger in her mouth in one fall swoop and sucks up the blood.
Later, Evie sneaks into the library at one point to do some snooping around. There she finds an entire file of papers on her. She freaks out and runs to her room to start packing to get out of there. Lord De Ville finds her packing and she accuses him of stalking her. He explains that Oliver found this long-lost cousin and wanted her to come stay, and that he wanted to know more about this cousin before letting her stay under his roof. Still sounds suspect to me. But she accepts his explanation and apology for how things went down. They end up kissing more and eventually having sex in her bed. (Anybody else hear Elsa saying “You can’t marry a man you just met” yet?) He jokes that they should make it a double wedding and she laughs at the idea of a shotgun wedding. But, in continuation of her poor decision-making skills, she jokingly agrees to it. Lord De Ville lets her know there’s another gown in the wardrobe for her to wear to dinner that night.
Evie gets to the dinner and notices she still hasn’t met the bride and groom. She asks him where they are and Lord De Ville begins to make a toast. The toast is about Evie joining him and the two Maids of Honor (Viktoria and Lucy) for all of eternity. Evie and Lord De Ville are the bride and groom, and Viktoria and Lucy are also his wives. He asks the servants to bring drinks and they slit one of the house maids’ throats into a bowl and they drink from that.
Evie realizes what is going on finally and tries to escape. Apparently, Viktoria has been his wife for 800 years, and Lucy for 100 years. Lord De Ville is so rich and looks so young because he is a vampire. And so are Viktoria and Lucy, which explains Viktoria’s actions during the spa day. But Lord De Ville isn’t just any vampire, he’s THE vampire… Dracula.
Evie makes it out of the home and tries to seek refuge at the home of an elderly couple.
However, it turns out they’re the caretakers of the Carfax estate. She was knocked out and returned to the house. Viktoria and Lucy try to explain what will happen to her and convince her to go through with the wedding. Of course, Evie is forced to attend the wedding.
Watch the movie to find out how it ends for Evie and the vampires. I don’t want to ruin it for you. This movie was so good you really should watch it!
I wasn’t familiar with any of the actors in the movie, so they were all new to me. A couple of names sounded vaguely familiar, but not enough to ring any bells. However, I thought they were all fantastic. I would love to see more from any of them really. The set design was incredible.
The home was gorgeous and felt like something from way back in the old days. The gowns the women wore were also gorgeous and I wouldn’t mind owning a few of them myself. The music included several familiar classical pieces in it that added a nice touch to the atmosphere of the
time period that is supposed to be represented in the home.
Seriously though, if you like horror, vampires, romance, twists and turns, you have got to check this movie out. The movie even leaves it open for a sequel. The only critique I could really give is that there were some instances of predictability later in the movie. But otherwise, it was great,
and I really recommend it. I give this movie a solid 9/10!
