"THE INVITE"
Based upon "The People Upstairs (Sentimental)" Written and Directed by Cesc Gay (2000)
Screenplay Written by Will McCormack & Rashida Jones
Directed by Olivia Wilde
**** (four stars)
RATED R
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 47 min
"...It's time to tell the truth
These things have to be faced
My fuse is burning out
And all that powder's gone to waste
Don't think for a moment, dear, that we'll ever be through
I'll build a bonfire of my dreams
And build a broken effigy of me and you..."
"Indoor Fireworks"
-music and lyrics by Elvis Costello
I would imagine for anyone that has existed within a long term relationship of any kind, we have all found ourselves within this space at some point.
Dear readers, I firmly believe that we are finding ourselves at a stage where Actress Olivia Wilde has emerged and has fully arrived as a filmmaker. From her sharply funny teen film "Booksmart" (2019) and her deeply underappreciated, undervalued and misrepresented yet searing psychological thriller "Don't Worry, Darling" (2022)--a film that seemingly landed her in "Hollywood jail" due to behind the scenes controversies that would never upend any male Director combined with a clearly passionate narrative diatribe against a toxic patriarchal establishment--for me, Wilde has been upon my radar as she has already demonstrated strong confidence behind the camera, effectively weaving worlds and stories that feel fully and freshly conceptualized and realized.
With her third film, "The Invite," Wilde helms and co-stars in a satirical comedy of manners is by turns ribald, wise, deeply sad and housing a perceptive quality that probes deeply and wounds while doing so as she gives us a portrait of a marriage precariously wobbling on the ropes. "The Invite" is an interior chamber piece that indulges us in hefty surprises and copious laughter while simultaneously leaving blisters and bruises. For those of you in relationships, I am doubtful if it is necessarily one that you would wish to watch together as the darkest corners of relationships are exposed to degrees that are uncomfortably relatable. That being said, "The Invite" is formidable, as it is through the excellence on display in the writing, performances and direction that we have not only Wilde's best film to date but one of the best films of 2026.
So to as not produce spoilers, I gently urge all of you to attempt to see this film as cold as possible to ensure the best overall effect. Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" stars Wilde and Seth Rogen as San Francisco married couple and parents to a 12 year old daughter; stay-at-home, frustrated artist Angela and failed indie rock musician now music teacher Joe. On this fateful evening, Joe returns home from work to discover Angela feverishly preparing their home for a dinner visit from upstairs neighbors, the alluring Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), whom Angela desperately wishes to be befriended by and whom Joe wishes nothing to do with.
From this opening, Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" unveils an intimate dance between two couples who fluctuate between states of intense dilapidation and another with a seemingly breezy, free spiritedness that is wholly foreign, as well as attracting and threatening to the feuding Angela and Joe. The overall effect is as sobering as it is often electrifying as Wilde--alongside key collaborators Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, Editors Anthony Boys & Yorgos Mavropsardis and Composer Devonte Hynes, whose sinister score perfectly accentuates the intensity--places us upon an emotional knife's edge from which we and the characters threaten to fall from over and again.
Enormous credit must be given to two distinct areas of Olivia Wilde's team and those belong to both Screenwriters Will McCormack & Rashida Jones, who more than know their way around navigating the intricacies of a relationship as evidenced in their previous screenplay for Lee Toland Krieger's "Celeste And Jesse Forever" (2012), and especially Wilde's set design crew who beautifully create an interior space that exists as much as a character as the people within the space as well as simultaneously functioning as an apartment, a source of shared history and the various nooks and caverns of two human hearts breaking over time, separately and together.
This technique makes for an experience that serves as voyeuristic, confessional and seductive while also allowing for areas of risky peculiarities, boisterous moments and the boldly, dangerously dramatic, which places Wilde's "The Invite" is comfortable cinematic company with the likes of Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men" (1957), Mike Nichols' "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" (1966), John Hughes' "The Breakfast Club" (1985), Roman Polanski's "Carnage" (2011), and believe it or not, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's "This Is The End" (2013).
Additionally, like Richard Linklater's "Before Midnight" (2013) and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash's "Downhill" (2020), Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" exists within the rarefied air of the sorts of cinematic love stories that we truly do not typically see and are the ones that I often wish for. We have more than enough films of people falling in love, but not nearly as many that are brave enough to explore and investigate the territory of what it takes to either remain in love or to question precisely why did the characters ever fall in love and should they even attempt to love again.
Wilde orchestrates a visually and emotionally claustrophobic environment where the silence is thunderous, the distance feels interminable and where the sanctuary of home is now unsafe due to the eggshells laid out everywhere, threatening to be broken like explosives in a minefield. With Angela and Joe, personal slights have becomes chasms of anxiety and rage and when faced with Pina and Hawk, and their cojoined essence of virility, unpredictability, openness and ease, the couples contrast, congeal, and ultimately reveal layered truths of exquisite depth that are ripe for debate and conversation for viewers long after the end credits appear.
This quality is a testament to the magic that can be created when in the company of great writing, direction and performances and Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" contains all three crucial elements wonderfully. All four leading performances in the film are uniformly excellent. As Angela and Joe, both Wilde and especially, Seth Rogen, make for a painfully compelling and convincing couple, who both house levels of self loathing due to past failures and disappointments now metastasizing as real and perceived current failures and disappointments of who they each felt that they could and should be vs. who they each actually are regardless of whatever good fortunes may actually exist if they were only able to acknowledge them.
Seth Rogen surprised me powerfully as he more than holds his own alongside his co-stars. Now, this is not to suggest that he has morphed into a Daniel Day-Lewis styled actor but I find it incredible that he has only continued to discover and unearth new layers to his screen persona and like his work in Danny Boyle's "Steve Jobs" (2015), scripted by none other than Aaron Sorkin, Rogen rises to the challenges of "The Invite" handsomely. Imagine Rogen's character from Judd Apatow's "Knocked Up" (2007) nearly 20 years later now deeply wounded and scarred, afraid at what his life has been and what it might never become due to the realities of aging. Rogen still possesses his brilliant comedic timing but now, itis fueled by a very real sense of pain and when Wilde catches him in his most interior moments, he is almost shattering to regard.
When all is said and done, Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" feels like a throwback as well as a serious gauntlet thrown down in our current age of cinema. Trust me, I am as excited to see Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" as any of you but Wilde has expertly delivered an experience that reminds you of a time when great writing, performances and direction were the only special effects...and that our current movie landscape more than deserves to have those kinds of films as readily available and in as many theaters as the epics.
For me, Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" is an invitation for us to an event and I gently urge you to accept.
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