Main cast: Nathalie Emmanuel (Evelyn Jackson), Thomas Doherty (Walter De Ville), Stephanie Corneliussen (Viktoria), Alana Boden (Lucy), Hugh Skinner (Oliver Alexander), Sean Pertwee (Renfield), Courtney Taylor (Grace), and Tian Chaudhry (Diya)
Director: Jessica M Thompson
Well, I suppose we are all due for another remake of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The Invitation is a modern-day retelling of that story, and it is given a treatment akin to some young adult novel affair, complete with plot armor for the heroine that doesn’t make much sense under any circumstance.
Evelyn Jackson is a waitress and, alongside her BFF and colleague Grace, often wonders what life will be like had she been wealthy instead of poor. Well, she has her wish come true when she is reconnected with a distant cousin, Oliver Alexander, and learns that she descends from the “other” family branch, one that resulted from her great-grandmother having a child out of wedlock with a black footman.
Of course, today is the current year, so Oliver assures her that the only thing that matters is that she is family, and he wants her to come over to England to meet the rest of the family at an upcoming wedding ceremony.
Naturally, she accepts. The wedding takes place at the huge mansion of a Walter De Ville. New Carfax Abbey looks like a typical haunted castle, but hey, it has maids and what not, so how can this not be fun? Evie Meghan Markles her way around, acting like oh, she’s American so she is sassy and rude, and surely she can’t be expected to understand puny things like protocol and etiquette. She’s American, after all, and… and… she’s American!
Let’s just say that I am not too crushed when she learns that her new family has offered her to De Ville as his third bride. Yes, Walter is actually Dracula, and three families, including the Alexanders, offer him a bride each for every generation in exchange for his protection and wealth. The Alexanders are very happy to reconnect with Evie for a reason…
Now, a Dracula movie lives and dies by its Dracula, and sad to say, while I won’t call Thomas Doherty butt ugly, he lacks the charisma or seductive bearing that are typically embodied by his character. This Walter De Ville is just a rasping, slimy creep, and it’s not really a surprise that Evie has no chemistry with him. Their “romance” feels forced, like it’s here solely because the script insists it is there… somewhere…
Once the jig is up and Evie realizes that she’s about to be married off to a rasping, slimy creep, she suddenly gets a plot armor that would make any Power Ranger envious. Whenever she should have died, she just can’t because of this armor.
Worse, Dracula is powered down so that she can win. Renfield, played by an inexplicably tanned Sean Pertwee that must really need the money, puts up a harder fight than Dracula in trying to take Evie down, which is downright embarrassing.
The movie turns its villain into an outright meme so that the heroine can win, and that’s sad. Why can’t Evie win by her own tenacity and cunning? No, instead the movie just hands her the win because… I don’t know, maybe the people behind this thing ran out of ideas halfway and decided that they just wanted to wrap everything up and go home ASAP.
Now that I think of it, Sean Pertwee will be pretty hot as Walter De Ville. He’s a daddy easy on the eyes, and he can be charming and sexy when he puts some effort into it, plus that voice alone, ooh.
Anyway, Nathalie Emmanuel isn’t bad in her role, but her character is written in such a way that she gets an upper hand over the bad guys in a laughably forced and fake manner. All of a sudden, a centuries-old powerful undead falls down and can’t get up, or even stop a skinny woman from pushing him around. Am I supposed to laugh at all this?
Whatever. This is one invitation that can be safely turned down. There’s nothing appealing or memorable here, sadly.
