TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Lady Persephone This film is labeled as a horror/thriller, and the audience could be easily fooled into thinking it is because of the Ouija board concept. Alas, The Invited is little more than a romantic love story between husband/wife wrapping itself around a convoluted horror plot. Along with the muddied plot and love aspect is an overwhelming use of religious subtext. This movie literally makes mention about how important faith is throughout and degrades the aesthetics characters as being the ruin of mankind. So, just to get this straight, horror fans ARE NOT INTO romance or having a religious agenda shoved down their throat. That's why we watch horror-strictly to avoid said things. As for the ending, it made absolutely no sense. It was a sad attempt at a twist. It didn't work. This is not a psychological thriller. Why did you bother?

Catharina_Sweden The problems with this movie are three: 1. It is too muddled. It is impossible to know what is real, what is a dream, what is a hallucination, what is a flashback etc.. The attempts to do it more interesting by turning the camera around and taking shots from "interesting" angles also just made it more confusing. The ending was strange and unsatisfying.2. There is simply too much of everything. Ghosts, demons, snakes, an Ouija board, a portal to another world, the magic circle, the doll, the old lady, the medium... yes even the Devil himself. Did I forget something..? One gets used to it, tires, and stops reacting by shock/surprise very early on. It is much better to chose only one or a couple of those ingredients, and concentrate on that.3. There is too much blood and gore and mutilated bodies here. This does not make the movie more scary in any positive sense - but only unpleasant.The only thing that redeems this movie a little are the very good actors - considering what they had to work with!

stephendelp99 No one looks forward to writing a scathing review of a movie. I think most would say that one always looks to be genuinely entertained when spending one's money on a ticket. Who WANTS to be disappointed going into a flick? No one. Which is the attitude I went in with when seeing this movie at the Crest Theatre in Sacramento last month. OH MY GOD. This ninety-some-odd-minute painful excuse of a film was, hands down, the worst movie I have ever viewed in my 30 years of watching movies. I do not mean this to be cruel to the filmmaker or the cast; I mean it literally. Absolute drivel from start to finish with some of the most melodramatic, cliché and predictable dialogue ever put to paper. I love a good horror flick as much as anyone, but there was nothing, not one single thing, in this movie that was scary or even admirable where horror film-making is concerned. Why? Because the filmmaker apparently decided to employ every and any "scary" device or trick or sound effect he'd ever heard or seen before in a horror movie and it therefore backfired as unrelenting silly moments of predictable cliché. By the way, what's with Pam Grier showing up at the house with this bizarre "slave accent", only to have that same silly accent disappear once they're all up in the attic? I took additional offense to this movie once I learned that the director is an acting coach in Sacramento. I repeat. OH MY GOD. Like Simon Cowell chewing out horrible singers when he learns that some of them are "singing teachers" back in their hometown, he should have this director standing before him; he'd have a field day with McKinney. The acting in The Invited is so bad - Lou Diamond Phillips being the worst of the lot - that the filmmaker might find it prudent to switch his credit to an Allen Smithee film. No joke. This movie could literally kill his business as an acting coach. Then again, would that be so bad? A famous director once said, "With such easy access nowadays to digital film-making cameras and editing tools, virtually anyone can be a filmmaker. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THEY NECESSARILY SHOULD. If The Invited is representative of the quality and caliber of film-making in the Sacramento region, then Sacramento film-making is indeed in deep s--t.

just_acting_up I also saw this film's screening at the Sacramento Film Festival and agree that it is about one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Besides some decent cinematography and nice locations, the film was a complete let-down. A majority of the acting was pathetic, and to think that director McKinney is coaching aspiring film actors at a studio in Sacramento is ridiculous. The plot line was far too simple, and the dialog left so much to be desired. The pace of the film and editing was way too slow at times, the thrilling moments seemed predictable. The only shock was at the very end, and then the film just leaves you hanging, not understanding the purpose at all.McKinney spends so much time hitting the audience over the head with religious overtones, but then you don't really understand to what purpose. A main character, Natalie Shaw, wonderfully played by Ellen Dow, accidentally unleashes this evil as a child. But she has apparently lived a full and decent life if she is over 90 years old at the end of the film! We see her with rosary beads in her retirement home, so she must have achieved some personal faith and belief in God during her lifetime. But when she attempts to destroy the evil "spirit board" the devil sucks her into hell? So... if the lesson of the film is... "have faith or the devil is going to get you" then she still ends up being sucked to hell, so where's the reasoning? Looks like a whole lot of money was spent on actors and visual effects on a real dud of a script and no direction. There is no dialog about why the mother doesn't want her baby baptized (apparently an important trait about why her character has no faith.) She screams and kicks uncontrollably while doctors are trying to help her save her baby... how unrealistic! The most annoying thing is everyone keeps going back into this house that is possessed, and the spiritual guide (a decent cameo by Pam Grier) tells them to get out, several people have already died... would you go back in? Also, in McKinney's bio he claims to have directed "over 60 films" but when you look at his IMDb credits, there's not much there. He's given the film festival's legend award? What a joke!