In between its continued dominance in the field of auteur-driven horror and its ill-advised forays into artificial intelligence, A24 has quietly been carving out a new niche for itself: movies for grown-ups. As Hollywood grows less and less interested in making anything but children’s movies for 50-year-old men, the indie studio has been picking up the slack, releasing a string of smartly-written, mid-budget dramedies about human beings in their 30s and 40s. The strategy seems to be paying off for them: both Materialists and The Drama were word-of-mouth sleeper hits, playing for months and making their budgets back multiple times over. Part of this, to be sure, likely has to do with their A-list headliners, who doubtlessly jump at the opportunity to appear in something other than franchise fodder. But I suspect the general public is equally hungry for a little substance. “Good movies” shouldn’t be a novelty at the multiplex, but here we are.
The latest entry in this canon is The Invite, the latest film from actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde, and it may be the best of the bunch. By turns acridly funny and achingly melancholic, The Invite is the sort of movie they simply don’t make anymore— at least, until very recently.
It’s clear from the moment we meet Joe and Angela (Seth Rogen and Wilde herself) that all has not been well for some time. No sooner has Joe gotten home from work, kicked his shoes off, and lain flat on the floor (due to some cocktail of back problems and crippling depression) than the two are at it, trading barbs which have clearly been honed over countless previous fights. Their teenage daughter is at a friend’s house, giving them a full stage on which to vent their spleens. At one point, Angela attempts a tenuous truce by asking Joe to “reset” by stepping out and entering the apartment anew (“Is this from a podcast?” he snidely asks; she confirms that it is). The peace lasts all of thirty seconds before they’re back at each other’s throats. It’s clear that the couple know each other better than anyone, and that they have had just about all of each other they can stand.
At the heart of the fight is the couple’s dinner plans. Angela has laid out an elaborate spread of cheese and meats for a dinner party with the couple’s upstairs neighbors, which Angela insists she told Joe about last night but to which Joe claims absolute ignorance. Those neighbors, Pina and Hawk (Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton) are, by all appearances, everything Joe and Angela are not: relaxed, effortlessly cool, madly in love with each other. Angela has been angling to arrange a hangout with them for ages; Joe is hesitant, mostly out of resentment toward the couple’s constant, floor-shaking sex above them. The dinner goes about as well as you’d expect— at least until Hawk and Pina extend a decidedly unexpected offer.
The Invite is a remake of Cesc Gay’s Spanish film Sentimental (released in international markets as The People Upstairs), which was itself based on Gay’s play of the same name. Watching The Invite, with its compact cast of characters and single location, it’s hard not to sense its stagebound origins. For the most part, Wilde avoids the usual stage-to-screen stuffiness via an assortment of cinematic tricks: a roving camera, dynamic editing, a skittering cello score by Devonté “Blood Orange” Hynes. Paradoxically, however, her savviest move is her tendency to keep all four actors in frame at once, as if we were watching them on stage. Despite the wordiness of its screenplay, The Invite is less about what its characters say than how the other characters react— an eyeroll from Joe as Angela papers over their dysfunctional domestic life, or Angela’s silent disbelief over the impossible coolness of her neighbors. There isn’t much silence amidst all the rat-a-tat dialogue, yet we learn the most about the characters in the moments when they’re not talking.
Needless to say, a four-hander like this lives and dies by the strength of its cast, and thankfully Wilde has assembled a great one. Rogen plays the same sort of doofusy stoner which has become his stock in trade, but here his shaggy charisma is weaponized; there’s a real meanness and cruelty pulsing underneath his amiable riffing. Norton, always at his best when he’s allowed to be funny, is a hoot as the cartoonishly perfect himbo. Cruz arguably gives the film’s powerhouse performance, particularly in a third-act monologue in which she coolly takes command of the entire movie. But I was perhaps most impressed with Wilde herself, who expresses a range and depth of emotion I’m not sure I’ve previously seen from her. There is a tendency among actors-turned-directors to prove their mettle by not simply directing their own starring vehicles, but The Invite is so plainly Wilde’s best work both in front of and behind the camera that I hope to see her take center stage in her own films more often.
There’s a tendency, when watching marital scream-a-thon movies, to try to parse out which party “won”— or, more accurately, whose side the filmmakers are on. The Invite is remarkably evenhanded, in that it invites us to see both parties at their best and worst. We can understand both Joe’s and Angela’s frustration with their lot in life; Joe nurses resentment over an almost-made-it music career, Angela has an art school degree collecting dust in the closet, and neither seems to take particular pleasure in parenthood. At the same time, the film doesn’t shy away from the fact that both are being absolute dicks about it. More than once during my preview screening, Joe or Angela said something which made the audience gasp like they were watching an Ari Aster film. When Pina finally snaps and says, “You’re both so mean to each other!” neither Joe, Angela, nor the audience can disagree.
It should go without saying that The Invite can be a bit of a tough hang; if you can’t see at least a little bit of yourself in either Joe or Angela (or, I suppose, Hawk or Pina), you’re in for a long evening with a couple of deeply unpleasant people. But whether we’d like to admit it to ourselves or not, they are relatable, and chances are you’ll come across at least a moment or two which cuts too close to the bone to be ignored. For all its venom, The Invite is one of the most caustically funny films of the year, acutely observed and expertly performed. It’s an honest-to-god grown-up film— just maybe don’t bring a date to it.
The Invite
2026
dir. Olivia Wilde
107 min.
Now playing @ Coolidge Corner Theatre & AMC Boston Common. Opens 7/10 @ Somerville Theatre
