The Invitation (2003)

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

When i saw this film on the video store shelf, i thought "hey, another cool horror movie with Lance Henriksen", but what i got was much more meaningful. What starts out as a mystery dinner where several guests are invented to their friend's remote mansion, turns into a psycho/dinner party. Henriksen poisons all his guests to make them all experience the enlightenment he experienced in South America. The guests start dropping like flies because they won't follow his directions, and by the end, only one guest seems to be left alive. this character we find out is Henriksen's son and as he takes him out into the early morning sunlight he tells him there really was no poison and that it was just to make then appreciate how special life really is. if you view this as a Taoist or a Buddist would, you will find yourself looking at the next dawn the same way. enjoy

The Invitation is about a guy who invites 6 people to his house and makes them confess their worst secrets in order to live. They have no way of leaving the island or escaping. He poisons them and if they don't tell the truth, they won't get the anecdote and they will die. He does this because the same thing happened to him when he went to another country. People start getting sick and don't know what it going on until he tells them they must reveal their worst secrets or else they will die. This movie sounded pretty good from the cover when I went to rent it, but was one of the worst movies I've ever seen and I've seen some pretty bad movies. Everything that happens is so random and way out there. The idea of the movie was pretty good, but everything was really confusing and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The people who made this movie must have been crazy and I don't know how anyone would be able to understand it.

This movie must have grown out of the near death experience of the writer or a close relative of the writer. When the experience happens and a person gets another chance at life, everything changes and with it the urge to let our loved ones know about the secret. A secret so hard to explain that it can only be heard in the mind's eye by going through the door of knowledge that brings many things into a clearer perception. The urge for Roland takes us viewers on a journey to educate not only us, but the characters in the movie and all of those involved in it's creation as well. I think that this visual story teller will inspire many to think.

The DVD box made this one seem really good, in spite of the lack of a "name" cast (with the exception of Lance Henriksen). It started out slow and never really picked it's speed up. The curves aren't enough to keep your interest and at times, you get the impression that some of the cast isn't interested either. A couple of things never quite get explained and the ending lacks.