The Invite (2026)
Directed by Olivia Wilde
Joe and Angela's marriage is on thin ice. When they invite their enigmatic upstairs neighbors for a dinner party, the night spirals into unexpected places. Have they reignited the spark or lit the match that burns it all down?
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20 films that influenced The Invite
What critics say influenced The Invite
The Invite is based on Cesc Gay‘s Spanish film The People Upstairs (also called Sentimental)…
Based on the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs…
The Invite, based on the Spanish director Cesc Gay’s 2020 movie The People Upstairs (which was itself based on an earlier play by Gay), features an unhappy couple inviting their upstairs neighbors for a dinner party that quickly goes to some strange places…
In a script based on the Spanish film The People Upstairs…
The film adapts Cesc Gay’s The People Upstairs for an American audience, which was also remade in Italy, Switzerland, France, and South Korea.
Based on the Spanish film The People Upstairs, Wilde’s picture borrows the original’s real-time setting…
They’re bickering, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” style, as sexologist Pina (Penélope Cruz) and sensitive former fire fighter Hawk (Edward Norton) arrive.
…the result is a four-person comedy of manners, like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” played for uncomfortable laughs.
If in something like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf the characters’ inadequacies and resentments fuel their increasingly erratic behavior, here these people feel like grab bags of punchlines…
…spiritually linked to other uncomfortable dinner party films, from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (dir. Mike Nichols, 1966)…
The Invite will be known as Olivia Wilde’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and this is not only fair, but an obvious influence.
Like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," "The Invite" traps its characters inside a domestic battlefield where conversation becomes psychological warfare.
There are also shades of Husbands and Wives, Woman Under the Influence, and more recently, Splitsville.
Upon its release in 1969, Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was both praised and criticised for being a social commentary and a verdict on marriage (and Americans) that was conveyable only through comedy. The film’s watershed financial success made it possible for others to follow suit and explore themes of consensual promiscuity on screen.
Paul Mazursky’s BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE in 1969 also treads similar ground but had oodles more maturity and profundity.
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…the centreframe editing visualising their face-off positions in a manner not dissimilar to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
…or Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1967) and beyond…
After two shared decades and a kid off to college, the pair have a marriage that has become comfortably stale in the way you imagine Bergman’s protagonists in a prequel to the break-up masterpiece, Scenes from a Marriage.
Stanley Kubrick (“Eyes Wide Shut”)…
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…a fitting companion piece to her excellent turn as the sexually repressed wife at the center of her recent directorial effort The Invite (2026), which is an otherwise far more formulaic tale of the conflict between conventional romantic relationships and kinks.
This marks what is a career-turning Sundance for Wilde, which also sees her direct and star in the riotous comedy, The Invite (review here), another movie about the breaking of sexual norms.
Wilde (who also gives a tremendous performance in another Sundance movie this year, Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex) excels at going big…
…her other 2026 Sundance movie, I Want Your Sex…
Her performance here could not be more opposite the take-charge BDSM artist in her other 2026 Sundance movie, I Want Your Sex, an intriguing double feature to showcase her often overlooked range.
This character couldn’t be more different from Erika, the maniacal sex-positive artist in her other Sundance film this year, I Want Your Sex…
Filmmakers like Noah Baumbach (with both “The Squid and the Whale” and his far better divorce drama “Marriage Story”)…