The Invite is one of the tensest movies of the year. For those who are trying to be Olivia Wilde completionists, these next few months are a gauntlet with the release of her next movies I Want Your Sex and Behemoth!, a collaboration with Pedro Pascal that’s shrouded in mystery. (She is also slated to direct a new Spider-person movie for Sony, so we can all hope it’s the much-deserved sequel to Madame Web is soon to be off the ground.) I won’t say too much about this movie beyond the fact that it is so refreshing to watch a couple who hate each other so much and who are so relieved to not have to be intimate with each other. Their revulsion for one another is so palpable except in two scenes, which reveal a lot about what they know and the glimmerings of their former companionate relationship: the moment they retire to the study to compare notes gleefully with one another about their neighbors after a big reveal, and later when one makes eyes at the other while they witness their idealized couple fighting tooth and nail. The Invite tries its best to make Edward Norton seem like a sexual creature before making him sort of a doofus. Wilde’s character defies a lot of belief in her ability to be a stay-at-home housewife/mom in the year of our Lord 2026 for teenage children with no ancestral wealth, which I chalk up to another movie that could be solved If the White Woman Had a Job. It’s enjoyable as a spiritual sister to a movie like Oh, Hi! which came out around this time last year.
