The Invite
★★★★Worth watchingIs The Invite worth watching? (No spoilers)
An uncomfortable, tense, awkward, cringe-worthy night with a married couple who can't stand each other, and one of my favorite films this year. It starts out hilarious and gets crazier every minute. Four people, one apartment, and it plays like a great stage play. Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz are all fantastic. Absolutely worth watching.
⚠️ Spoiler warning: everything below the quick take, including the full review and ending explained, contains spoilers.
The Invite review
What an uncomfortable, tense, awkward, cringe-worthy shit show. Also one of my favorite films this year.
What starts as a hilarious picture of the movie-esque couple who hates each other goes from a ridiculous night to straight unbelievable. Every moment somehow gets crazier and never lets up.
Somehow, maybe by a miracle, the film ends perfectly, both with hope and a real feeling of the struggle to come.
Love and marriage is never easy, and seeing two people so caught up in the other's faults is exhausting to watch, and terrifying.
I love that neither couple is perfect, and that both our main characters are extremely flawed. Neither is at fault for the other's woes, and both have dug this grave to hell together.
The fact that the night ends with plans for divorce, not a future, is devastating. You can feel that they both know what the other needs, but refuse to take the accountability and effort needed to be the first to step up.
Amazing performance by everyone. It's great to see Edward Norton and Seth Rogen acting again (in something so good), and I love that it didn't waste time with other characters. It's basically a play and I love it.
The Invite ending explained
Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde) invite their upstairs neighbors, Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pina (Penélope Cruz), down for dinner. What starts as an awkward evening spirals into a night of brutal honesty. Pina, a therapist, pulls out everything Joe and Angela have been avoiding: they haven't slept together in over a year, Joe feels like a failure, and Angela feels trapped. They admit they used to be best friends who really loved each other, and that the resentment slowly buried all of it.
The neighbors are a messy couple too, but they fight and make up in minutes. Next to them, you can see exactly what Joe and Angela have lost.
By the end of the night, the two of them are talking about divorce, not a future. But the final scene brings them back to the piano, echoing the happy flashback the film opens with. Sitting down and playing together again is the sign: they're finally going to work together to repair things.
Olivia Wilde has said she and Rogen played that last scene believing opposite things, and that she later came around to thinking they stay together. That's how it lands: the piano is the first step back toward each other.
My take: it ends with both hope and a real sense of the struggle to come. They both know what the other needs, and the piano shows they're finally willing to step up. It won't be easy, but they're going to try.
Does The Invite have a post-credits scene?
No. The Invite has no mid-credits or post-credits scene.
Movies like The Invite
- Sentimental (2020) – the Spanish film The Invite is a remake of
- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) – the original couple-tears-each-other-apart dinner party
- Carnage (2011) – two couples, one apartment, and civility falling apart
- Marriage Story (2019) – a painfully honest look at a marriage ending
- Blue Valentine (2010) – a couple who used to love each other, and what's left