The Invitation

There’s no glitz or glamour to set it apart from the pack, and that’s ultimately [The Invitation's] demise.

Thompson relies way too heavily on cheap jump scares to put us on edge, which is a shame, because there’s enough atmosphere within the film’s initial mystery.

Part inert bodice-ripper, part vampire Cinderella story, its mixed themes could have benefitted from a purer bloodline.

But beyond one somewhat gory scene of a throat being slit (which is in the trailer), there’s little in the way of shocking or rather terrifying sequences.

For a fright-fest as broad as this one, there’s an awful lot of banal dialogue, and the scare patterns are repetitive enough that even the easiest startlers (I count myself among them) grow immune early on.

Despite some ambitious efforts to revitalize hoary horror movie tropes with allegorical commentary on race, class and male privilege, “The Invitation” is too wearyingly hackneyed for too much of its running time.

It lives or dies by how much you're willing to just hang with the cast as they chew scenery and pretend we didn't already know what's really going on.

The Invitation is a satisfying retelling of a classic literary monster with lots of gothic horror goodness along the way.

The simmering, building romance unfolds at a steady pace. This may not light a fire in BookTok circles, but the structure fits decades of romance storytelling.

It cannot rise above how generic and dull a lot of it is, never bringing the story to satisfying conclusions.