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see-arcane · 2 years

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“The Invitation,” or, “Please, God, Stop Letting Writer/Directors Slap Public Domain Names on Their Fanfiction”

Spoilers for The Invitation below.

Get a drink, grab some snacks. We’re going to be here awhile.

I am now and always a sucker (bad dum tshh) for new Dracula media.

Past experience has only given a decent payoff 1 out of 5 times, but hey, I like to gamble. And even with my misgivings about the trailer, even with the immediate sour gut punch of Rotten Tomatoes’ poor reviews from critics and audiences on opening night, I was ready to gamble again. The Invitation was written and directed by a woman, Jessica M. Thompson, and it’s playing to an obvious gothic vampire-romance angle, which meant it was already a prime target for snide review bombing. Hell, I was already half-grinding my teeth over the implications of Ken Doll Dracula at his Most Suavely von Handsome and the less than flattering depiction of the Harkers in the trailer.

But there was a chance it was misdirection! Trailers always hide their best twists!

Plus, it was technically doing what Last Voyage of the Demeter and the (obviously parodic) Renfield mean to do when they hit the theaters—it’s exploring the underutilized characters and lore potential that Stoker left laying around the narrative. In this case, the story of the Brides as seen through the lens of Evie, a young woman tricked into joining that same harem. That’s interesting! And, joy of joys, this Dracula is not pulling a Coppola.

No reincarnated wives, no starry-eyed romance with the victim. He’s just being a manipulative hot chick collector. If you squint, you can allllllmost see a loving nod to the (likewise less than faithful, but hey, it's not Gary Oldman going all Romeo with Winona Ryder 2.0) Hammer horror history, with various Draculas preying upon various maidens like, you know, a predator. Which he is.

But that steered me to the last thread of hesitation, which was the rating: PG-13. The only time a PG-13 movie has ever scared me was the American remake of The Ring—a freak miracle that I still believe outshines the original Japanese Ringu in atmosphere, acting, and scares. It was a one-off. Never been pulled off before or since in my opinion.

In the context of Dracula media, the only time this bastard should rate less than an R is when he’s there for a parody’s sake.

But still, I crossed my fingers. Got my ticket. Sat through the whole thing.

Let’s save a little time and get the Pros out of the way.

PROS:

-Evie and her best friend Grace are the best part of the cast, if only when they get to bounce off each other.

-‘Lucy’ is not really Lucy Westenra, though her demeanor is sweet enough to play to her original book inspiration. This is Lucy ‘Billington.’

-The Billingtons, along with two other ‘old money’ families featured in the big evil vampire wedding are all human, and all responsible for offering ‘Walter DeVille’ a viable pretty daughter as a tithe-Bride in exchange for their own prosperity. It’s an interesting take and it helps mesh with one of the film’s overarching themes that vampires and the rich are predators of the same ilk, abusing and feeding on the lower classes. Evie herself is a freelancer/caterer used to serving up canapes to the wealthy and her ongoing camaraderie with the hired help is nice to see.

-The subtlest good point the movie offers is the fate of the maids/catering girls who are brought in for the duration of the wedding celebration. They are, quite literally, the catering itself, being fed on and picked off one by one. It’s a metaphor given full bloody demonstration without needing it hammered in.

-Beautiful backdrop with the manor. Lots of gothic love in the design.

-At best, the movie might serve as a stepping stone for folks just weaning themselves out of softer vampire media and into meatier horror fare. Or it could just be for the cheesecake factor of the pretty actors and fangs. Everyone has a turn to get their titties out; Ken Doll Drac gets the obligatory shirtless scene, the Brides have gowns in the climax that seem one sneeze away from indecent exposure. If you’re here for some hot bloodsucker objectifying, a grrrrl power ending, and the kind of flick you can have playing in the background without wanting to crane your head around to catch every scene while you do something else, go for it.

CONS:

-…Give me a minute.

-………….Give me another minute.

- Okay. Let’s start small.

- Just from a technical angle, the acting is not stellar. Nor is the editing. Frankly, there is not a single good scare orchestrated throughout the whole film. And there are opportunities for it everywhere! They just are never, ever taken. Even when the poor maids are getting murdered there’s no menace. It’s like watching sheep marched into a slaughter, but with even less impact.

- Even the potential of having a good surprise monster design is left out. There are no creature effects beyond pointy nails and sharp teeth. Really, if it weren’t for those teeny little traits, everyone involved could just be a bunch of rich weirdoes with a blood fetish. (Which could have been its own flick! Go full Bathory! But no.)

- My absolute tiniest nitpick? Bats and wolves are mentioned as being around, bats and wolves never make an appearance. For shame.

- Grrrrrl power is in full effect. The climax is the main offender here, from the acting, to the editing, to the strangely Matrixy effects in the final battle. It might have worked if it was kept more low-key—Evie’s only real allies are the all-female catering staff/fodder, her best friend back overseas, and, towards the end, the head maid Mrs. Swift and a repentant Lucy who both sacrifice their lives to help her. Even the fact that, if you look, most of the rich human families involved have a heavy skew towards male members versus female. The latter are there, but not as many. The reason Evie gets roped into the scheme is that she’s the last female of the Alexander family they can offer to renew DeVille/Dracula’s fealty. There is not one single male in the cast who has anything but ulterior motives.

-…Including, yes, Jonathan fucking Harker. Alongside Mina fucking Harker. Who, while not in-house servants, are loyal to fucking Dracula. Not even vampires! Just regular evil old folks! Here, they’re an elderly couple running what looks like an antique shop near the manor, and they immediately concuss and sellout Evie when she comes to them for help.

- The brunette Bride, Viktoria, is the bi-coded, Catty Jealous Wife © ™ and the Evil Awful No-Good Mean Girl of the cast. She might have been fun if she wasn’t written to be a cardboard cutout of a character.

- Walter DeVille (those who’ve read the book, you know that last name is taken from canon as one of Dracula’s aliases, because the Count thinks he’s so damn funny) alias ‘Walt’ alias Actual Fucking Dracula. Where do I begin with you, sir?

This man is a marvel of hybridizing the worst parts of charismatic vampiric bad boy narratives and the Little Red Riding Hood Syndrome that involves deforming a villain so far away from his original threat and character into bodice ripper makeover land that he’s utterly unrecognizable.

Coppola-spawned wet dreams, lukewarm Fifty Shades of Grey rough drafts, and every unused extra from every Sexypire TV series ever made have their stamp here. True Blood, Vampire Diaries, that pile of ‘Erik was a Vampire All Along !!1!’ Phantom of the Opera fanfic you bookmarked in middle school. It’s all here. It all went into this one character.

With all my apologies to you, Drac actor Thomas Doherty, you are not scary. You’re not even mildly ominous. The old man playing the butler had more grisly gravitas than you. Which isn’t your fault! You’re following directions! You’re being Count Fuckula, a guy whose only want and purpose is to Gain New Hot Wife, Give Mysterious Unexplained Prosperity/Blood Magic/??? to Family of New Hot Wife, and Be Mr. Sexington Q. Charmley. Your jawline, pectorals, and all 4.5 scenes of chemistry you’re cattle-prodded into with Evie before the ~dramatic reveal~ of vampire cult goings-on were no doubt you following your cues to the letter.

It's not your fault any more than it was Gary Oldman’s fault. You have a script, a role, a certain vibe the director wants from you. But in Gary Oldman’s case, at least he acted like he had whole centuries’ worth of power, intellect, and massacre behind him, rather than an all-night reading session studying YA supernatural series for dialogue tips, done in-between gym sessions and cologne commercials.

You are not Dracula. You were never going to be Dracula. No matter what ‘See! See! I used names and places from the book!’ unearned titles are thrown around, nothing of you or this movie has anything to do with Dracula.

And here we have the biggest, least surprising sin of the film. The longstanding tradition of Dracula adaptations and spinoffs, now at its final form.

-Just because you put a famous name on something does not mean it is that thing. Naming a Chihuahua after Cerberus does not make your half-pound purse dog the three-headed monster mongrel of Hades. By the same token, vomiting public domain names all over the place—

Whitby! Carfax Abbey! Jonathan and Mina Harker! DeVille! Brides! Lucy! Dracula!

—does not mean shit if the things wearing those names are not those things. I know, I know, it’s tempting to hide behind the clout of well-known titles to lend extra punch to your work. It draws people in (hi), and gets them interested because, “Ooh, I recognize that name! I know and love that story!”

It takes some of the hard work out of it. It saves you from having to do what, in hindsight, you should have done all along—Coppola, Moffat, so many more, and now Thompson—and be original. Give these people new names, because they are clearly not the characters they’re named after and/or referencing. Then you can do whatever the hell you want without staying in the confines of the canon you’re borrowing from and trying to expand on; which, you know, didn’t stop you anyway.

You want some Dracula in there? Make Walter one of those snob bloodsuckers who reference Dracula. Maybe have him look down his nose at Stoker’s silly misguided notions about the nature of vampires, but give him credit for hitting close with the bit about the Brides, ha ha.

Or, even better, have him actually be young compared to most vampires. Give Evie something to chew his ass out on—point out that even for an immortal self-made ‘god,’ as he calls himself, he’s still scrambling for respect by naming himself and his surroundings after Stoker’s work. ‘The Harkers’ are only called that because their master wants it that way. The estate was renamed to Carfax. DeVille isn’t even his real last name. He’s just a wealthy, powerful fanboy who happens to have real fangs and a hankering for fresh bedmates. He doesn’t even seek the latter out himself. He needs his Brides delivered to him, like some shitty undead Uber Eats service. Pathetic.

Or or, have a really, properly nasty knife twist for the horror aspect. Make him a descendant of, say, Jonathan and Mina Harker. Spoilers for those who haven’t read the book, only minor spoilers for those familiar with the Coppola film, but Dracula does get a bit nippy with them as the book goes on. There have been theories (and spinoffs) focusing on what might happen if the Count’s influence was still in those heroic veins.

And what might happen if it passed on down the bloodline.

It’d make a lovely bit of salt and lemon to that legacy’s wound if Walter was an apple who fell perilously far from the tree…

…Only for Evie to provide a counterbalance. Yes, half her bloodline is of the Alexanders, which is what matters to the villains. But they only research that half. Wouldn’t it have been a laugh if they overlooked the other side of her tree, which is descended from the Van Helsing bloodline? Whoops.

Among dozens of other ways the story could have gone.

-In short, I was ready to leave The Invitation either mildly surprised or expectedly disappointed. Instead, I just left sad.

It wasn’t just an underwhelming film. It was a confirmation of my concerns for where future Dracula media might be headed. Even in things like Castlevania and Hellsing, stories that feature some of my favorite (and utterly absurd) takes on the Count, the former being full of occult power, wrath, and cunning, the other just having a riotously violent good time tearing his way through enemies like they’re screaming tissue paper, both of them have a romantic undercurrent to them, with Lisa of Lupu and Integra Hellsing respectively. They are anti-villain and anti-hero, not villains outright.

The one thing Invitation-Dracula has going for him is that he has the tiniest hint of Bluebeardish manipulator and illicit motives to his character. He is two-faced, he is a schemer. But, I feel this deserves repeating, the butler is more intimidating than him. Yes, even after the evil reveal.

That’s not a Dracula, guys. That’s not even a Lestat. Even an Edward would laugh at this mess.

It’s the final end product of generations of sandblasting and sexifying Dracula until he’s just one of a hundred interchangeable Sultry Nosferatu Dolls that writers and directors use to add legitimacy they haven’t earned to personal fantasies that have to hollow out the source material before their own idea can fit inside the airbrushed husk and wear it around like a costume.

-In shorter short, I am tired. I am spiteful. If this movie and those like it are good for nothing else, it lends me confidence in my own skill, and has inspired me to be infinitely, viciously more fucked up in what I make out of the toolbox Stoker left behind.

#going to take a nap #have a slice of my Harker anniversary cake #drag out all my best vampire flicks for a marathon #and dig into some spite-writing #The Invitation #The Invitation (2022)#dracula #spoilers #ranting and raging

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