WOMAN on Top

Film director Karyn Kusama might not be a household name, having directed only four feature films in the last 15 years. Still, she has been championed as another woman trying to break into the male-dominated control center of the Hollywood scene.

Girlfight, starring Michelle Rodriguez as a female boxer, was an auspicious debut for writer/producer/director Kusama, winning the Director’s Prize and Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance festival. Apart from the art crowd, though, the film failed to connect with mainstream audiences.

Yet she got big studio money for her sophomore effort in 2005, the science-fiction dystopian thriller Aeon Flux, starring Charlize Theron as a leggy assassin. Despite its impressive cast with two Oscar winners (Theron and Frances McDormand) and impressive effects, the movie mostly bombed with viewers and critics. Kusama blamed the studio for extensive unsolicited intervention.

Four years later, results and complaints were much the same for Jennifer’s Body, the highly publicized horror comedy written by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody as her follow-up to Juno. With then red-hot Megan Fox as a demon-possessed Mean Girl and Amanda Seyfried as her nerdy good-girl buddy, Jennifer’s Body played like a cross between Heathers and Carrie. Most of the film is terrific black comedy with Cody’s telltale pokes at high school and middle-class conventions, but the last third — going for the jugular instead of the funny bone — doesn’t quite work.

Kusama blamed the studio; the big boys blamed her. In retrospect, Jennifer’s Body is better than its reputation, the rewards outweighing the disappointments.

Returning to her independent roots after a long absence, Kusama crafted her best film yet last year. Though The Invitation has generally received better critical reception than Girlfight, viewers had little chance to see it on the big screen, thanks to wary pennywise distributors. Just released on DVD, we can hope the film will find the audience it deserves.

Co-written by Phil Hay (Kusama’s husband) and Matt Manfredi, The Invitation is more accurately described as a suspense thriller rather than the horror film some would label it. One of the movie’s many pleasures is how Kusama plays on our expectations, seguing from dramatic tension into downright dread before wrapping things up with a conclusion as unexpected as it is chilling and satisfying.

On their way to a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills, Will (Logan Marsall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) hit a coyote, requiring Will to put the animal out of its misery with a tire iron. An unsettling beginning to the evening and the movie, the episode establishes a tone of uneasiness that’s gradually ratcheted tighter and tighter.

Hosting the party of old friends are Will’s ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman of Game of Thrones and The Age of Adaline). The Hollywood Hills home was once Will’s and Eden’s, but he left her the house after the divorce, occasioned by the death of their young son. The various friends of all types — including a gay couple and a pretty Asian American — are joined by two late arrivals, an ex-wild child (Lindsay Burdge) and a reformed murderer (John Carroll Lynch, Morgan’s stick-wielding guru in The Walking Dead).

Personal tensions and general weirdness begin to rise as the evening wears on; most of the tensions are due to the guilt and bitterness Will still has about his son’s death. It doesn’t help his mood that the party is at his former home. Then again, Eden and her new man seem almost too happy, ominously so, to be real.

For instance, David insists on showing the guests a film, which he and Eden brought back from their stay with a charismatic cult figure in South America. Depicting the “happy” death of an elderly group member, David and Eden expect their guests to feel the same peace and happiness they got from the experience.

Will doesn’t buy any of it, though, and grows increasingly suspicious about everything — for good reason, as it turns out. We expect something like this, but Kusama still manages to surprise and shock us all the way to the end.

An eerie blend of The Big Chill and Straw Dogs, Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation deserves a prompt RSVP from those inclined to be thrilled.