Tödliche Einladung

Spanish film with people brought on a yacht by Olivia (Maribel Vertu), including her sister Sonia (Stephanie Cayo), a detective.

Olivia announced that she has a surprise for all of them. Shortly afterward she falls to her death.

Since the yacht is between two jurisdictions, Sonia works on the case - who killed her sister, and why have all these people been gathered here?

This is a convoluted story - the people are connected by a tragedy that took place in Olivia's and then-husband Carlos' life. The ex is also on the yacht, along with Olivia's nemesis, a yoga instructor, a housekeeper, a workman, and later on, a detective.

We aren't given much to go on. At the end, Sonia, with everyone gathered together in true mystery style, reveals the elaborate plot.

This plot was complicated, and I'm not really sure how Sonia figured it out.

It's not horrible, but it has no intensity or interesting atmosphere. We don't get to know the people very well.

Agatha gets invited to join her sister Olivia's yacht party along with several other elite people. Agatha is a crime enthusiast and runs her own podcast. On the yacht, Olivia reveals the one of her guest won't make it back to the shore and that they will have contemplate their lives up until then as that boat ride could be their last. As they are woken up to a thud leading to a dead Olivia in the high seas, it is upto Agatha to solve the mystery and catch the culprit. How she does that forms rest of the story.

The film gets derailed once the on screen death happens and it barely gives enough to buy into the mystery. Since the whole reveal was about delivering the what the flower stood for, let me try to put forth my analogy in those terms..

1. Love = The makers feel the bunch of characters they have are enough to pull off this story. But there is literal lack of bonding between then especially Agatha and Olivia, who are sisters while there is a mention of loss of a loved one that got them distant but, the death of Olivia barely gets any emotion out of Agatha who at best is an amateur crime enthusiast solving the mystery in an hackneyed manner. There is enough love for the genre but nothing transcends onto the screen.

2. Justice = The whole reveal has this as a major aim i.e. Get justice to the deserving. Sadly, the writing denies it as the reveal itself is far from convicinving and the way it is narrated, just complicates it further when seen from a broad perspective, the crime was pretty much over simplified as it is and so were the main suspects.

3. Forgiveness = It is a bit hard to but as an audience, will have to forgive the makers for a bland product. For all the talk about able to forgive and move on, among the characters, it comes way too late and hardly has any impact.

4. Freedom = the film ended and the instant feeling I got was, well Freedom. Not that I kept comparing it with the recent murder mystery films including the Knives Out, but the weak writing made this a tiresome experience, enough to feel free once the film ended. Also, there was no need to show the police as so dummies, glad they were free to from this case in the end.

A bunch of quirky personalities are assembled at an exclusive Mexican location only to realize there may be a killer in their midst. So right away we know this is a NAFTA-knockoff of Agatha Christie; and it's more or less what you'd expect. The cast is charming and the movie maintains an affable darkly-comedic tone. There are two major flaws. First the movie extols the viewer to follow along and solve the mystery; but it doesn't provide enough information and the solution relies on flashback exposition dumps. Second it spends far too little time setting up the mystery and potential red herrings; and far too much time on explicating the resolution. Overall reasonably enjoyable but not as good as it could or should have been.

Booriiiinggg. It is no need to comment too much. I finished 15 minutes and I can say enough fake agatha Christie stories please! This is not convincing. I felt lots of vibes from this movie. Everybody does something very suspicious and also from the beginning in podcast part, she says 'if you look at details, you can solve' and you try to not miss anything and this is really boring. Every scenes are so tiring! I didn't like it. I can say that. I think for this genre, every thing has been said and no new anymore. My words finished here. It was in my list and I think I will not finish the movie. Because it didn't capture me.

Just boring to watch this whodunit movie. The main lead does all the work and police keeps listening to her just because she has podcast on solving cases. She has authority to call others, go outside and all others are confined in the mansion. After 15 mins you will just want to fast forward it to the end to know the culprit. They tried to copy from knives out but failed badly The cast is total let down. Need to fill in some text to complete the character requirement. Just copying the above.

Just boring to watch this whodunit movie. The main lead does all the work and police keeps listening to her just because she has podcast on solving cases.