REVIEW: ‘The Invite’ Wounds With Biting And Hilarious Accuracy

Awash in faded, stylish blues that pave a scorched path of chilly marital contempt, The Invite masterfully bottles the festering wounds of built-up resentments and the nastiest versions of our insecurities. Aided by a tightly wound script, committed performances, and some truly inspired and hilarious editing, the film dissects with fevered intent the pains of love and the mess that comes with setting boundaries with neighbors. 

The drama and pitfalls of marriage are well-documented in cinematic history. The highs, the lows, and the cyclical necessity of renewing mental vows to one another to ensure we share the same intended path, no matter the slight deviations. The density of the pact, the emotional weight it carries (if marriage is your thing), is vast and plentiful for narrative options. All of which makes it so much more impressive that director and star Olivia Wilde manages to mine new, refreshing, and ugly truths out of what it means to be married and find yourself, inexplicably or not, on a sinking ship, seeking shore. 

Based on the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs by Cesc Gay, adapted by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, The Invite makes it clear from the start that our couple is in a state of marital unrest. Briefly overtured by a snippet of their happier times, when we meet Joe (Seth Rogen), he’s discontent, bitter, and angrily puffing as he pedals his folding bike home along the winding, uphill streets of San Francisco. 

Marital unrest simmers in the bitingly insightful The Invite. 

To him, a failed musician of a bygone, blip on the radar genre, who now works as a teacher at what he dubs a “bad school,” everything is a sign of his ineptitude. From the bike he rides to his students’ apathy to his wife’s inexhaustible energy when preparing a spur-of-the-moment get-together with the upstairs neighbors, everything is a taxing reminder of all the ways he has either failed or continues to lack. Even the upstairs neighbors’ vocal sexual escapades are a harsh realization of the orgasms he fails to give his wife. 

Joe’s resentment is matched by Angela’s frenetic desire to be seen and her emotionally volatile anxiety born on the back of her husband’s clear misery. She is desperate for friends, for acknowledgment of her intellect and charisma, to the point that she forces the gathering in an effort to feel more than the absence of Joe. Using the guise of their newly refurbished home, Angela invites their neighbors, Pína (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), to see the changes, while her and Joe’s already fissured marriage continues to implode in the presence of a couple who, on the surface, seem to have it all worked out. 

Pína and Hawk, by all accounts, are just as interested in Joe and Angela. But they’re cooler, more aloof – sexually liberated and loose rather than coiled tight. We see this manifest in how they hold themselves, how they touch one another in easy displays of affection, contrasted with Angela and Joe who stand constantly at odds and out of arms reach. Even the blouse Angela wears, buttoned all the way up her neck, is a visual nod to her inability to find release.

The characters’ energy gives weight to each interaction. 

As the night progresses, this situational comedy of eschewed manners dips its toes into the offerings of films such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and other boilerplate dramas, but does so with an efficient editing style that maintains a sense of movement. This isn’t a playwright’s drama read aloud verbatim for the sake of it, but an insightful, bruising character drama with playful direction and even better editing that heightens the humor and disconnect even more. 

While it might be easy to glean what transpires in The Invite, it’s best to go in with as little knowledge as possible for the sake of the plentiful jokes that soar with humanistic intensity. The barbs and snide remarks work because they feel so in tune with the lived-in characters.

Despite the heightened scenarios and the way the foursome interact, they feel real, as evident in the opening scenes, where Wilde’s Angela careens through their home, stepping over Joe, who lies out of breath on the floor after his tiring ride home. They’re arguing, but the intimacy is in the familiarity of their routines, contentious or otherwise. 

Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen shine as characters on the brink of major personal change. 

That physicality is one of the major draws of The Invite. Utilizing the open apartment with its creative, expressive interior design, the choreography and framing of the characters are deeply intentional. One particular highlight comes when, fed up, Joe pushes Angela onto the couch as she tries to stop him from saying something rude. It’s a little thing, but it suggests such overfamiliarity that, even if it’s a moment of annoyance, we can sense just how well the two know each other. 

As the space closes in and the four sit increasingly close to one another, forming a locked-in square as misunderstandings resolve and explode, Wilde’s direction beautifully highlights a simmering chemistry. Rogen and Cruz have a shocking amount of palpable energy and bring the greatest sense of sensuality to The Invite in a moment when the two share a joint, while locked away in his isolated office. 

But it’s Wilde who steals the film, both as a director and star. However, the editing by Yorgos Mavropsaridis and  Anthony Boys is a close second. It’s how the three all work together that truly delivers the goods.

Because it’s not just that Wilde is performing with a livewire, caged energy of a woman desperate for joy, be it in passing, voyeuristic glances, or the specificity of thrifted accoutrements. It’s the crash cut to Angela standing in her bathtub, Wilde turning her megawatt smile to the manic default the story necessitates, as she tells Hawk about the intent of each bathroom tile, that really sells where she is in life. 

Everything from the expert editing to the disconcerting score elevates the tension of The Invite.

There’s also the moment when she simultaneously growls and gags while chewing on a Xanax, which perhaps proves we’ve been sleeping on Wilde’s comedic capabilities. This is such a painfully funny film because, as much as you want to avert your gaze, the comic tension is positively threatening to burn us and the characters; there’s too much going on on screen to look away. 

The only issue The Invite suffers is that it runs a little long, and it feels like it needs to wrap things up neater than it really does. But it’s hardly work to spend a little longer with these characters. Backed by the evocative score from Blood Orange singer Dev Hynes, the disruptive sonic cues and the pulsating sense of impending personal doom come together for something devastatingly real. 

Because of all the comedy and the will they/won’t they (but no, will they really) of the story, this is a deeply insightful film about the intricacies of relationships and, hell, even what it means to make friends at a certain point where the idea of boundaries has all but eroded. But really, it’s about a single line: how, throughout life, people generally have just a few significant love affairs, either with other people or with different versions of someone you already love. 

For all the humor, the film knows when to reveal its bruised but beating heart. 

And that’s marriage in a nutshell, right? The ability to love someone through each stage of their existence, with their core beliefs remaining stable while how they interact with the world changes with what they weather or the triumphs they champion. We aren’t the versions we were at 22 or 30. We change, and the ability to change with someone or to let them go defines our relationships with each other. To remain stuck isn’t an option. 

Armed with a devilishly interrogative script, expressive direction that homes in on the truths of these characters, and intense performances from Wilde and Rogen, The Invite delights in how much it disarms you. Wickedly funny with bouts of revealing warmth, the film spotlights Wilde’s breadth of skill as we laugh through the most discomforting moments and sober up just in time for it to get real.

It’s a brilliant display of artistic intent that understands and allows the worst attributes without ever devaluing or dismissing their very real discontent. It’s human, and that’s what makes it hurt, even while we’re laughing. 

The Invite is out now in theaters.