An excerpt from my script review for The Invitation which will be available 06/14/16:
2.) Plot Stability
The logline drew me in, and the setup got me past page 15.
Setting the Premise
Two years ago Will and Eden lost their son due to an accident at a birthday party.
Soon after they divorced, and hadn’t seen each other for a year or more.
Besides being apart, neither have seen their close group of friends since the accident.
So the story takes place with everyone meeting two years after the death of the boy in the same house where the accident took place.
Fucking creepy, right?
But wait, there’s more!
Eden’s new husband, David, is a strange duck and invites two stranger ducks to the party.
All of this leads to an excellent base for your plot to build on…
Unfortunately the author’s never truly capitalize on it.
Not when…
David deadbolts every door in the house, where only his keys can open the doors.
Then shows them a video from their cult “The Invitation” where a woman dies onscreen, and another woman “inhales her soul”?
THEN the group plays a game that they play at the cult retreats called “I Want…” and one of the strangers David invites admits that he killed his wife…accidentally.
Yet NONE the characters react rationally to this aside from Will.
All this fucking wacky shit is going on (even setting aside the fact that the last time they were all together in this house a boy died) and people aren’t worried?
On page 54 one character, Claire, does try to leave, and David makes a big deal of it, even having Pruitt, wife murdering character, “escort” her out to the car. (Guess what happens to Claire!)
Why the FUCK isn’t everyone like, “Peace out, bitches?” (People in LA still say that when leaving a party, right?)
Instead we’re given Will reacting normally by finding all of this behavior off the wall, but he’s dismissed by the other characters because he’s not over his son’s death? Or rude to the host giving them expensive wine? What the fuck is that noise?
The initial start could have led to a very tense and dramatic story, but sadly what we didn’t get it.
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