The Invitation: Tepid, torpid, tiresome horror more Fifty Shades than Dracula

The Invitation (R13, 105mins) Directed by Jessica M. Thompson **

A tepid, torpid horror, this is essentially Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the Fifty Shades and Ready or Not Generation.

Shot in Hungary, it provides a chance for English former Game of Thrones’ star Natahlie Emmanuel to showcase her American accent and US audiences to solidify their preconceptions about the nefarious inner-workings of the UK’s landed gentry. Allusions to its now 125-year-old literary inspiration abound, although neither subtlety nor tension-building are this film’s strengths.

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Emmanuel is Evie Jackson, an aspiring New York artist and jobbing waitress still coming to terms with her mother’s death from cancer just a few months ago. An only child whose father passed when she was still a teen, it’s curiosity rather than loneliness that encourages her to take one of Unlock Your Past’s DNA tests.

To her shock, the first notification she gets is not from them, but a man claiming to be her long-lost cousin. “He wears an Ascot,” she assures her skeptical best friend Grace (Courtney Taylor), “what could he possibly be after?”

“Your kidneys,” comes the pithy reply.

But Oliver (Hugh Skinner) seems charming – and harmless – enough. Revealing that she’s ultimately the result of a family scandal – a matriarch’s illicit affair with a footman – back in the 1920s, he says the whole Alexander clan know about her – and are eager to meet.

Even better, there’s a perfect upcoming opportunity when everyone will be gathered together for “the wedding of the century” at the family’s dear friend Walter Deville’s (Thomas Doherty) New Carfax estate.

While Evie is initially hesitant, Oliver assures her that she is helping him use up his airpoints miles and “the worst thing that could happen is you got an all-expenses-paid trip”.

However, while the surroundings and host couldn’t be more charming, something doesn’t feel right about the goings-on at New Carfax. Whether it’s the numbered maids, creepy head butler Mr Fields (Sean Pertwee), the off-limits library, the constant threat of shrike strikes, or the oddly-behaving maids of honour (Stephanie Corneliussen, Alana Boden) it’s hard to tell what screams “danger” the most.

While certainly not in the same star-making-turn league as Samara Weaving in Ready, Emmanuel does her level-best to lift what is essentially a fairly sloppy, shlocky take on a fairly well-worn tale.

Even the visceral thrills are few and far between, as director and co-writer Jessica M. Thompson (dark 2020 TV comedy The End) struggles to switch gears between a modern day Downton and a full-on Hammer horror. And, as it suddenly veers towards its Grand Guignol finale, the real disappointment of just how second-rate it all feels really sinks in.

If anything, The Invitation only serves as a reminder of how good – wooden Keanu Reeves, winsome Winona Ryder and all – Frances Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula really was those 30 summers ago.

The Invitation is now screening in select cinemas nationwide.