Exclusive: The Invitation Director Jessica M. Thompson on Her Gothic Horror Movie

The Invitation is a wonderful film, existing in a sweet spot that is not often occupied — an incredibly entertaining and fun movie that is also subversive and intelligent. With a PG-13 rating and a wide reach (as already evidenced by the more than five million views of its trailer on YouTube), this movie from Jessica M. Thompson strives for accessibility, yet never compromises its clever intentions and depth of representation.

Thompson is a Los Angeleno by way of Australia, cutting her teeth on short films for years before her critically acclaimed feature-length debut The Light of the Moon (starring Stephanie Beatriz, of Brooklyn Nine-Nine), The Invitation is a very different film for Thompson, not just in terms of genre but also budget, style, and reach. The writer/director spoke to us about her film and its horror, advertising, and representation.

The Classic Gothic Plot of The Invitation

As mentioned, Thompson hasn’t exactly made a horror film before (her excellent short film Hike comes close, though), but that’s largely unimportant for her. “I’m drawn to interesting characters, I’m drawn to interesting stories. I’m kind of genre agnostic,” Thompson told us. “I don’t like to be pigeonholed, and I don’t like to be confined. But really what I’m drawn to time and time again are complicated women characters, and usually women who, against all odds, rise through and persevere. That seems to be a running theme throughout all of my films or TV series […] I’m less about the genre and more about the character and the story.”

The story for The Invitation drew Thompson’s attention back when it was called The Bride; it was being developed for famed filmmaker Sam Raimi’s production company, but eventually, Blair Butler’s script moved on and Thompson got involved, excitedly working on a re-write. The film follows Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel, best known as Missandel in Game of Thrones and Ramsey in the Fast and Furious franchise), a working-class BIPOC woman mourning the death of her last family member.

When Evie takes a 23andMe-style DNA test, she is contacted by a surprise family member across the pond. This British cousin (the wonderful and underrated Hugh Skinner) invites her over to the English countryside for an all-expenses-paid visit to meet her very welcoming family as they gather for a wedding. It’s a stunning, sprawling estate filled with very beautiful (and very white) people, where she meets the extremely handsome and rich host of the wedding from a different family. Things, of course, aren’t as they seem.

Related: The Best Gothic Movies of All Time

So far, so typical (at least in a narrative sense, with a plot that immediately brings to mind You’re Next, Ready or Not, Get Out, and even another film titled The Invitation). However, Thompson’s movie is a distinct, playful, visually stunning, and thought-provoking addition (and subversion) of this excellent list, using DNA tests and bloodlines to cleverly comment on social classes, gender, racism, and horror movies themselves. The Invitation feels like an homage to (and postmodern update of) classic Gothic horror, from the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Vincent Price to Hammer horror films, while also being a part of a more recent wave of horror, a genre Thompson is happy to finally delve into.

The Horror of the Bride in The Invitation

“What I really love about this new wave of horror, what I really love Jordan Peele and Jennifer Kent, you know, is that they’re exploring things, whether it’s grief or apprehension of motherhood,” said Thompson. “You’re getting to use genre to explore some of your own fears and some of your concerns about society, while still being making something that’s wildly entertaining and fun.” One of Thompson’s favorite horror films is The Shining, which makes a certain amount of sense in relation to The Invitation. Both occupy the creepy space of a massive architectural maze where the horror comes from the family itself.

“I think what makes it so scary, is that it’s someone that you know and love who is turning against you,” said Thompson. “That’s what makes it frightening. Because it’s not a monster under the bed — it’s a monster in the bed.” The “monster in the bed” becomes very literal in The Invitation, with Thompson finding horror in the vulnerabilities of romantic love and sexual lust. Some of this is surprisingly personal for Thompson, and perhaps why the original title The Bride called out to her. “There are a lot of horror tropes, and to me, subverting the wedding was really, really important,” said Thompson. She elaborated:

At the time, I was engaged to be married, and I was a little bit apprehensive about it, never being someone who dreamed of that. I started to look at the history of marriage and how actually quite disturbing it was. Really, women were seen as property, and they were sold by their dads off to the families that they wanted, and this is fairly recent. Women couldn’t own a house or have a credit card until the 70s, so it’s not like it’s that old, and I won’t even talk about the horrors that are happening in America in terms of women’s rights [referring to the overturning of Roe v. Wade]. It’s still relevant, right? It’s like these old, horrific ideas that are true to life are still completely irrelevant. So why not make that in a horror space?

Trailers and Spoilers in Advertising The Invitation

It’s at this point that we arrive at a crossroads. Even in a spoiler-free article, there’s always the risk of revelation, the potential to ruin the joy which may come from entering into something blind without any knowledge. The marketing campaign for The Invitation has decided to tear off the blindfold and reveal much more than usual, so it’s entirely open information and something Thompson wanted to discuss. However, any reader who prefers avoiding major plot points, surprises, and character arcs before seeing a film should stop here, and should absolutely not watch the trailer.

The remainder of this article discusses major plot points of The Invitation, as seen in its trailer.Marriage was certainly on Thompson’s mind when making The Invitation, so it was serendipitous that Blair Butler’s script wound up with Thompson. “This being my first studio film, I wanted to really make sure that it stood out and was something that I really believed in,” said Thompson. “And when Blair’s script came to me and I saw that it was an origin story of The Brides of Dracula, and that it had a lot of these luscious metaphors of the patriarchy, and the rich and the poor, kind of class structure, I was like, ‘Oh, this has got a bit of everything for everyone,’ and I was all in.”

Vampires are always conducive to excellent allegory, and Thompson certainly sucks out the juiciest aspects of her themes. However, that element of The Invitation is essentially a final act reveal which is mysteriously teased and comes as a legitimate surprise at a certain moment in the film, much more so than the so-called ‘shocking twists’ viewers usually see coming in films. The trailer and advertising embrace and completely reveal this as a fundamental facet of the film, for better or worse.

For Thompson’s part, she’d rather go into the theater without any narrative foreknowledge, but marketing has its own machinations. “I mean, I understand that advertising and marketing are its own beast,” said Thompson, “and I understand that you’ve got to have all of those things, but I’m someone who’s always ‘less is more.’ I would rather just have a teaser instead of a trailer […] Personally, if I could have control of everything, I would not give away all the twists and turns.”

Related: The Invitation: Plot, Cast, and Everything Else We Know

“But that being said,” continued Thompson, “everyone has a right to absorb things the way that they want to. Some people would really love to know, especially when it’s a horror film, what they’re getting in for. So, I’m not here to dictate what people want and what makes them go see a film.”

Yes, The Invitation is Jessica Thompson’s Vampire Movie

The sensuous vampires in The Invitation compose a hierarchy that is a perfect reflection of social issues which are almost always relevant; it’s a very carefully constructed distribution of characters and families, clearly written carefully. “Blair and I worked on it together,” said Thompson, “we kind of rewrote the script together for over a year and really strengthened the characters, making sure that the dialogue and the relationships were believable.”

The biggest emphasis from Thompson when she joined the film was to “lean into the vulnerabilities, those kinds of social commentary,” as she called it. “For instance, in the original script, Evie was not a woman of color, and I decided to make the lead a woman of color because I felt that it meant more, it added another layer to the story. And Nathalie is the perfect person to play that role. She’s just so incredible.”

It’s true, Nathalie Emmanuel is wonderful here, continuing her extremely wide range beginning with West End productions of The Lion King through to the Maze Runner films and now Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming Megalopolis. Including her was an excellent choice, not just because of her acting, but because of the inextricable linking between class and race worldwide. The Invitation simply wouldn’t be as great without her.

Jessica M. Thompson Invites Viewers to Her Filmmaking Career

A gorgeous, gothic vampire movie is probably the last thing audiences were expecting from Thompson after her emotionally raw, quietly simmering indie drama The Light of the Moon, but that’s exactly the way Thompson likes it. “You always want to scale up,” said Thompson, “you always want to know that the world you’re creating is visually appealing and cinematic and sumptuous. Yeah, this is much closer to what I’d call my style.” Just like her sophomore feature, though, you can’t pin down Thompson’s cinema.

“I’m genre agnostic, and I don’t want to just be pigeonholed into one thing,” said Thompson, who said that a great example of a filmmaking career that she’d like to emulate is, “the incredible Steven Spielberg. I think he can do anything.” Like Spielberg, Thompson wants to make big sci-fi pictures, powerful dramas, historical fiction — anything and everything. After proving herself with The Light of the Moon, she got studio backing for The Invitation and has upped the ante, making her one of the most exciting emerging filmmakers today.

“I always thought of my first film as a big business card, like, ‘this is what I can do with this amount of money. Now, give me this amount of money, and I’ll show you what I can do.’ And hopefully, it’s onwards and upwards from there.” Despite the visual resplendence and wonderful atmosphere of her polished, great new film, Thompson is only getting started.

The Invitation will be in theaters on Aug. 26th, 2022.