Invitation (2003 Video)
4/10
Cute girls, mediocre visuals, variable effects, bad acting, even worse camera-work
31 March 2008
A group of college-aged guys and girls get together for a reunion at a secluded house by a lake. When they get there, they're greeted by an over acting bald giant (who walks like he's had a wedgie for the past five years) The clichéd old bat shows up to warn them to leave at once, this goes ignored as the groups splits up and starts rambling about marriages and drinking and novelty songs. Midnight swimming in a sauna masquerading as a lake leads to murder by a babe wearing weird contact lenses, as creepy little kids turn up and start scaring them, and eventually causing their gruesome demise, possibly all as payback for a tragedy in their past many years earlier, it's never really explained. Along the way, their are numerous references to earlier and better horrors: the aforementioned old crone is planted in the ground and run over with a mulcher, a la Motel Hell, immediately followed by a reference to Friday the 13th part 2, etc. The variable effects run the gamut from being eerie (some of the photography and settings in the woods at night, and the music score) to merely cheap shocks (seizure-inducing strobe lights, Marilyn Manson contact lenses, and fog machines working overtime indoors and out)

There might actually have been something here, had the movie not been made on poverty row, and maybe with a tighter pacing at the end, it could have been a fun little B movie. But what we're left with is a mish mash of ideas and variable effects, mostly filmed though wide angle lens causing considerable distortion, intermingled with eye candy in sexy, short little Tricia Lyn Scott (as the rather smug Violet) and Tiffany Shepis lookalike Ryann Davey (as Melina). It's really not that bad, but it's nothing to recommend either, it could have been a lot more fun.
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