“The Invitation” (MA) **

ACCORDING to IMDb, writer/director Jessica M Thompson’s venture into the latest moving talking image foray into Bram Stoker’s legacy was available to Australian audiences on the same day as I saw it, which was a day after its absolute world-first release in France and the Philippines.

Does that portend some marketing wizard’s judgement of skill of the Australian audience to judge a new release at first sight? I think not. The only other person when I sat down to watch “The Invitation” in a cinema capable of seating several hundred people was a young woman sitting several rows behind me. Nobody else came in.

By the time it had finished, she had voted with her feet on its creative values. I saw the end alone. It was my job. It was also, to the best of my recollection, the first vampire movie I saw ever, or at least since I was a kid selling empty soft-drink bottles as a penny a’piece to raise the price of a ticket to the Saturday matinee to see the latest episode of the serial, a movie genre that TV killed.

Here’s what Ms Thompson told a publication called “Bloody Disgusting” about her reasons for making the film: “It was to me, the ‘Bride of Dracula’ origin story. That was what captivated me because we haven’t seen that. We’ve done ‘Dracula’ so many times; let’s do the brides.

“There are new stories we want to see and want to know about, and we use that as a jumping-off point. It’s more of an inspiration point than trying to stay true to the book or retell it.”

Shot at the Nadasdy Castle in Hungary playing an English country mansion, “The Invitation” shares a connection with the infamous blood-guzzling lady-killer Elizabeth Bathory, which Ms Thompson felt made it uniquely perfect for the vampire theme. 

Here’s a quick summary of the film: as the unsuspecting young woman caught in a web of exsanguination  [process of draining or losing blood] woven by a collection of old men, following her mother’s death and with no other known relatives, Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) takes a DNA test… and discovers a long-lost cousin she never knew she had. 

Invited by her new-found family to a lavish wedding in the English countryside, she’s at first seduced by the attractive aristocratic host but is soon thrust into a nightmare of survival as she uncovers twisted secrets in her family’s history and the unsettling intentions behind their sinful generosity.

Don’t say you’ve not been warned.

At Dendy