The Invited

The Ouija Board has always been a favorite theme in horror and within five minutes past the opening credits we witness a young girl crafting her own on an wooden circle to communicate with her dead brother. It is the year 1920 and the film begins in black and white at an old farmhouse, which happens to have a family cemetery out back. The girl anxiously goes to her brothers grave to test her device with horrible repercussions.

The movie forwards into the present with our protagonist Michelle, an author of children's fiction, and her husband Jack meeting a realtor at the same farmhouse. At that moment you can guess that she will find the Ouija board and unleash it's menace (especially if she uses it alone).

The best thing about the Invited was it steered clear from the possession motif notable in the Witchboard trilogy and most recently in Ouija. It does offer some scares and a few gruesome effects that make you forgive some cheap CGI effects deployed. The acting is believable and the character Michelle is like able enough to keep you watching what unfolds. Any horror fan should give it a go.

B+

Alan Bannacheck Minneapolis, MN

I saw the sneak screening of this at The Crest Theater in Sacramento during the Sac Int'l Film Fest. "The Invited is a true horror film in homage to Hitchcock and other old school thrillers. It had a captivating storyline as well as good heart pumping suspense. I screamed from the beginning of the movie to the very end! The special effects were amazing and the acting was honest. Ryan McKinney's vision of this story is so vivid that you will come away from it trembling and very paranoid. This film has a little of everything including romance and action.I can't wait to see it again in theaters! And yes, I will scream my little heart out.

I saw this film last night at the Sacramento Film Festival and it is, by far, the worst fill-length film I have ever seen. This is not an exaggeration. I've seen some bad movies and this tops them all. It's not even all the blood that makes it horrible...it's the entire story. It's filled with cliché plot lines and has so many loose ends that you're left wondering what the director was thinking. The word at the festival is that he has a prequel and sequel to film, but I really hope he doesn't. They're only bound to be worse than this one and I don't want to see them.

I know some people who read the original script and was told post-film what the original ending had been. The original ending would have been far superior and would have made actual sense to the overall story, but no. The director decided on an ending that was hideous, unnecessary and sick. In fact, I would label this entire film as unworthy of anyone's time and/or money.

I will say that the only bright spot in this film is Ellen Dow. She's always awesome.

This movie was made on a realtively small budget in a very much larger landscape of feature films, and was impressive to me because of the smartly written plot and how much was done with so little. I am a writter and tend to analyze movies from that standpoint. What I decided after watching this movie at the Crest Theatre--it was the marquee film for the Sacramento 2010 Film Festival--was that this dude Ryan McKinney is smart, very smart, and does not treat his audience as if they were any thing less. He lets your brain work out details rather than step-by-step going, "Ok audience, 1 + 1 equals 2, and 2 + 2 equals 4...." No, no, no, no, McKinney respects his audience and takes you on a journey (ride!) that kept me beguiled from start to end because I, frankly, did not know what was going to happen next.

And then, BAM!, came the ending. It was as if, on a clear blue day, a piano fell straight from the sky. It, if I can show my age and use an expression from back in the day, "Blew my Mind!"

I too saw the Sacramento Film Festival showing. I really, really WANTED to like this movie. I didn't. It was disjointed and at times illogical. The elements are there, but it definitely needs more editing. A lot more editing. I think it is telling that in at least one of the cast lists online one of the main actor's photo(Carlos Alazraqui) is represented by a cartoon monkey, which doesn't seem like a ringing endorsement. Oddly, Carlos' character was portrayed the most interestingly. I also thought Megan Ward, who played the primary protagonist, did a good job. Lou Diamond Phillips wasn't up to par, but, again, that could be an issue with editing. Or not.