Paced like a TV show with a writers room on autopilot, The Invitation behaves as if it has all the time in the world. It’s about vampires, so taking it slow, there not being any real rush, entire centuries of time to kill and all that are obviously part of the idea. But even so… couldn’t it just get a move on!
It’s another case of Nathalie Emmanuel having all the gifts except the one of choosing her next project wisely. She plays the modern American miss – democratically inclined, nose-ring-sporting, open, self-reliant, struggling – who is whisked away to England to meet a long-lost branch of the family she never knew she had. They’re the opposite of her – hierarchical, stinkingly wealthy, secretive and Undead.
Evie meets Walter De Ville (clue’s in the name), the tall, dark and saturnine owner of the vastly lavish New Carfax Abbey, somewhere in the Whitby area. Fans of Bram Stoker will already know where this is heading. Other characters – Mina, Lucy and Jonathan Harker – pop up as if to nudge you in case you hadn’t got the message. A butler called Renfield. A pair of languid and voluptuous females who behave like the brides of Dracula, because that’s what they are.
Evie (Emmanuel) has unwittingly wandered into a nest of vampires without realising it, though the audience has twigged almost instantly. For a while this is cute, the peekaboo with the hidden-vampire plot. But after a while Evie’s failure to join the dots starts to make her look stupid. How come she hasn’t noticed that all the people who surround Walter De Ville are either compliant adjutants or have the demeanour of those frozen mice you buy to feed pet snakes?
There’s a faint Hammer horror vibe in its grandiosity and lavishness and Thomas Doherty plays De Ville as a suave Christopher Lee-adjacent gent of the old school, though De Ville’s leering is sending off semaphore flares into the night, which New York smart Evie also somehow never spots.
Maybe Evie has parked better judgement in favour of getting laid. It’s one possible explanation. If so, the movie seems horny too. Emmanuel has clearly clamped down on doing scenes in the buff since her Game of Thrones days, but she is sexbomb alluring throughout, whether it’s rolling around in bed in her scanties or attending the full-dress balls that Walter and his cronies like to throw. It seems cruel to call attention to Emmanuel’s oddly blotchy skin here and there, but that’s what DP Autumn Eakin is doing – I just report what I see.
Generally, though, she looks spiffy. Though Emmanuel is more than just a pretty face – it’s notable that the movie only really picks up energy when she is required to switch up several gears in its last third and become ferocious, which she does magnificently.
Apart from Emmanuel there’s not much acting going on. She is in almost every scene and holds it all together, almost, by force of will. Doherty is an unattractive but plausible vampire, Sean Pertwee’s Renfield only really gets a couple of scenes of shouting. Alana Boden and Stephanie Corneliussen cut through the fog as De Ville’s brides.
Ignore the vampires and it works OK as a story about a mixed-race girl from America being sneered at by very white (mentioned several times), very rich relatives. It also functions nicely as an allegory for the vampiric tendencies of the vastly wealthy. Or as a warning for young women who place themselves in obvious peril in spite of all the warning signs being there. If you want to squeeze feminist juice out of it – Walter is not called “the master” for no reason – there is that aspect too.
But as a vampire movie… no. Not until the last 30 minutes or so. Though by that point you might have given up.
The Invitation – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
