LIFF '09: INVITATION ONLY review
(Bumping this review before the film screens as part of the 23rd Leeds International Film Festival, 14/11/09 at 4am as part of the Night of the Dead event, and again 15/11/09 at 2pm. While I wasn't blown away, I can imagine it going down very well indeed playing to a crowd of genre fans howling for blood. Enjoy!)
Raise your hand if this sounds familiar; an (effectively) faceless individual or organisation gathers a handful of seemingly unrelated people at a deserted location, possibly with some altruistic justification behind the whole soiree. All of a sudden, click; the lights go out, the doors slam shut and a killer (or killers) stalks the terrified group, crossing them off the list in increasingly gruesome ways until the Final Boy or Girl decides they've had enough.
Then again, seeing something billed as 'Taiwan's first slasher film' doesn't exactly suggest originality, and director Brian Ko seems well aware it's unlikely to be one of his target audience's concerns. Invitation Only, his debut (building on his first short horror film Gui Yin) is a ruthlessly efficient hour-and-a-half that wastes absolutely no time in setting up the first few of many, many genre tropes; a lesbian makeout session on a packed dancefloor, followed by severed body parts and a quick throat-slitting for anyone still unsure where the plot (such as it is) might be going.
The narrative proper starts with hapless everyman Wade (Bryant Chang, Eternal Summer), general dogsbody for giant corporation the Weida Group and roped in to chauffeur their CEO Mr Yang around when his regular driver falls ill. When Wade accidentally catches Mr Yang in the middle of a hasty backseat liaison with beautiful model Dana (Maria Ozawa, the Eurasian AV star providing the requisite nudity) rather than firing Wade outright Mr Yang seems surprisingly keen on buying his silence with a ticket to a lavish company function where anyone with one of these exclusive invitations can live out their fantasies on the Weida Group's tab.
Unsurprisingly, the sportscar and the girl (Dana herself) Wade's been dreaming of come with a price, as masked knifemen chase him and his fellow guests through the building, spiriting anyone they catch away for torture and mutilation politely applauded by an attentive crowd of glitterati.
Why are they doing this? Ko takes a weak stab at having the bad guys justify themselves, but anyone watching for the story is liable to be disappointed. It's notable any sense of real menace the film engenders fades practically to nothing whenever the knifemen take their masks off. While everyone involved seems under no illusions about the kind of movie they're making TV actor Jerry Huang settles for playing Mr Yang as pure vanilla sociopath, and while Chang and young actress Julianne as meek bank employee Hitomi show talent enough the workmanlike script weighs them down with every other line.
Again, though, Ko and his crew have more important things on their minds; Maria Ozawa seems game enough for her drawn-out sex scene with Chang and the violence is frequent and explicit enough gorehounds should walk away happy. Ko seems to have a good grip on the mechanics of a slasher film, at least, with several setpieces gruesome and inventive enough to have real impact despite being nothing new dramatically speaking. Indeed technically, as a first-time attempt at the genre Invitation Only acquits itself fairly well overall. The lack of budget is obvious, but the effects hold up and the visuals are relatively warm, even organic, without so much of the cold look that hampers many cheaper productions shot on DV.
Predictably, then, the average viewer's mileage is very likely to depend on their ability to suspend their disbelief in the face of the usual pitfalls - painfully obvious exposition, florid monologuing, the lack of any kind of credible psychology all round - to say nothing of a cast ranging from bland to unlikeable and a poorly conceived attempt to set up a sequel.
That said Invitation Only is well put together, amusingly self-aware and undemanding enough for those with the stomach for it. It's grisly enough to unsettle even the more cynical viewers, and the cast put in enough effort audiences don't have to work too hard to overlook an unremarkable script. Brian Ko could well go on to better things given more money and time to hone his craft, and while it's difficult to recommend his first film outright it's a fairly solid entry into the field. Fingers crossed Taiwan can learn from his example.
