Film: Invitation Only
Release date: 5th April 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 96 mins
Director: Kevin Ko
Starring: Kristian Brodie, Bryant Chang, Vivi Ho, Jerry Huang, Joseph Ma
Genre: Horror
Studio: Momentum
Format: DVD
Country: Taiwan
In a global sense, Invitation Only may be just another entry in the growing library of torture-porn films following in the infamous footsteps of Hostel. For Taiwan, though, it represents much more. Believe it or not, this is Taiwan’s very first slasher movie, and director Kevin Ko has pulled no punches to make sure it arrives with a bang. Buckets of gore? Check. Gratuitous nudity? Check. Gaping plot holes and inexplicable character motivations? Check. Everything’s in place, we’re ready to go.
We join Wade, a down-trodden, ambitionless young man, bullied by his boss and miserable in his job as a chauffeur for a limo company. After a chance meeting with his company’s CEO in a compromising position with a beautiful fashion model, Wade is bribed for his silence with a mysterious ticket granting him access to a secret party, which he will attend in his boss’s place. The party is a hedonistic, underground affair for the rich and influential, and promises to fulfil the wildest desires of its guests.
It’s not long before things turn sinister, however, and Wade and several other party newcomers realise they’re all there by suspicious means - and have been exposed as leading duplicitous lives. Soon it becomes a cat and mouse game of terror and torture, with the guests being chased through dimly lit rooms and being picked off one by one by a masked assailant in gradually more and more gruesome ways…
Ko and his cast are clearly having lots of fun, splattering the screen red with goo, and wasting no time in getting to the meat of the action. Sadly, though, things aren’t quite as entertaining for us.
Primarily the film comes across as a thinly glossed pastiche of its Western influences, most obviously Hostel and Saw, but also borrowing shamelessly from ‘70s classics like Halloween and Friday The 13th. Where Hostel succeeded, however, with a knowing sense of irony, some genuine tension and an (at the time) unexpectedly shocking ‘ick factor’, Invitation Only lacks all of these key ingredients. It seems to have arrived at the Torture-Porn party sadly late, and the gore, while gleefully liberal and visceral, is neither shocking nor inventive - and seriously pales in comparison to its predecessors.
The film also suffers from a terminal lack of humour, and the events – rather than executed with playful exuberance – are presented in deadly seriousness. This is a crucial flaw, as what might have been a funny, if sick slasher – a knowing mirror of it’s Western influences – comes across more as a desperately earnest home movie, trying but largely failing to live up to expectations.
The cast are adequate for what’s required: beautiful, wooden and thoroughly disposable – everything the victims in a slasher movie should be. The stand out is Jerry Huang as company CEO Mr. Yang, who adds an initially creepy and intense presence, although as he is called on for a more involved role in the proceedings his character slowly descends into parody. Special credit also to the unintentionally hilarious bearded evil mastermind (surely the campest megalomaniac we’ve seen in many years?) for delivering his outrageously absurd dialogue with complete conviction. The women are beautiful and largely helpless, and there’s a soft-core sex scene with Japanese adult movie star Maria Ozawa thrown in early on for good measure, which should keep the eager fan boys very happy.
As the action hots up for a daring breakout and escape, and the set pieces and sequences become more complex, Kevin Ko struggles to keep up. A high speed chase between a Ferrari and a pick-up in his hands somehow becomes boring, and the use of ‘inventive’ camera angles and flashy editing to paper over the small budget cracks fail to convince. The sequence comes off looking deeply amateur, and you wish again that more energy had been put into originality instead of trying to ape big budget blockbusters.
Invitation Only is an uninspired and formulaic effort that will please only the most undemanding and devoted of teenage horror fans. Perhaps in the years to come we can look forward to Taiwan finding its own voice in the horror genre, and it will start to produce films of genuine originality, instead of trying to imitate its influences on their own terms. Until then, we’ll have to put up with Invitation Only. LOZ
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