The Invite (2026) — The Long Boxd Review
Chekhov’s Back Problem.
“The Invite, or how to incorrectly introduce swinging life to a broken couple and end every group conversation into a therapy session because there’s a therapist in the room.
God bless you Pina.” — My Letterboxd
This film’s trailer comes off as only one way. This is going to be about sex isn’t it? I genuinely thought that was all it was. Another Olivia Wilde film that’s half-hearted in execution. I was wrong. Very incorrect. And the trailer, like a breath of fresh air, did not spoil the true intentions of the film. In fact, we get about halfway into the film and then the intentions change dramatically and hilariously. Very good. Before I give out the laurels, I want to point out that while Olivia Wilde does a great job in her performance and directing, she did not write this film. That is neither a slight towards her or a demerit to the film, it is simply a point to note.
I want to get to the story and messaging so let’s get though the details quickly. The performances were amazing. This film has four credited actors, one (or two) locations, and is 107 minutes of these four individuals throwing performance after performance at each other. It starts off so cringey, like you know this night will not end well already. Joe (Seth Rogan) is definitely not feeling this and just wants to get it over with. Hawk (Edward Norton) sees this and takes advantage of it by poking and proding, dropping knowing lines like he’s unaware and being superficial to get more personality to ooze out of Rogan and Wilde. Angela (Olivia Wilde), god help her, needs therapy. There is so much bottled up anxiety behind those eyes and Wilde does an amazing job giving us that energetic and emotional mess on screen. And lastly, the best performance in the show: Pina (Penelope Cruz) acting as the wise and knowing caretaker of this whole night. She knows the whole game plan, she sees through Joe from the get go, but her careful unraveling is what sets the two couples to a state of comfort and then back out of it. Cruz, truly, does steal the show. And that isn’t to say light of the others. Rogan’s goofy demeanor works well as his character isn’t a well knit individual either. Norton plays very smart here. He gives off an innocent face, a gentle voice, and a leading dialogue with well timed comedic notes — if Cruz is the dynamic force that pushes, Norton is the hand that guides; both acting to further Rogan and Wilde along. But more than that, I want to praise his ability to dig into the emotional side when needed. It gives off his hurt but healed personality as he is able to stay relatively calm even as Joe lashes out, pulling off that mature complex and recognition that Joe isn’t quite as secure as he is and is speaking without knowing himself.
I think anyone can easily notice the cinematography, lighting, and blocking. Part of having only one location to shoot in is the challenge of making it interesting. We start the film off very fast, moving between different focal planes, switching angles on a dime, and holding shots for emphasis. As the plot moves ahead, we see the same locations again and again, like the tiled bathroom and the tight kitchen, but it never really looks the same as it did before — we never see the rooms in the same angle. Once we see a floor height camera looking up to Hawk, then we see a table height camera encapsulating the two couples, and once more having the camera rotate around the room to display each member’s position in the dynamic; all in the living room. And I couldn’t help but notice how this was used throughout the film to establish distance between the performers. Sometimes they are close, sometimes they are far. But not simply because the actors are standing close and far but because the framing and focusing puts them beside each other or with a huge gap. And that plays into understanding if the characters talking to each other are actually close or not. Hence, seeing Norton be flirtatious when Angela and Hawk are talking about paint colors opens our understanding that he’s trying to push a certain narrative along forcefully. And is replicated in a juxtaposed scene with Cruz always placed inches from Rogan even if she’s on the other side of the office room.
Get Mani D / aclife’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Pina is quickly exposed as the psychiatrist and sexologist of the group. The sexologist part comes pretty quickly in the film when she gets aggressive about Joe making light of a woman’s fertility (big oof moment). How throughout the film she stands up for herself and Angela’s capacity to exist in the room. And how standing up for femininity, womanhood, and personal identity isn’t a shout from a stage but the everyday representation of strong women existing as they please. She wants the same from Angela, and perhaps sees possibility for Joe to gain that understanding, but the moment she said she was a therapist I knew how this film was likely to go. See, every time a person with some level of psychology knowledge enters a party (like myself…not even a brag) conversations turn deep and personal. Of course, when there’s alcohol involved, people will always turn to divulge personal stories. It becomes a safe space. But unlike others, and Joe, I can’t respond superficially, and that creates a therapizing moment. There’s a therapy session everywhere for those with eyes to see them. That’s what happens here too, Pina ends up being the group therapist which was hilarious to me. It’s almost like she can’t help herself, she sees a problem, is able to identify each member’s issue, address it, speak on it, get Joe and Angela to spill, and then throws her hands up because she’s not really their therapist anyways and isn’t supposed to be doing this. Yeah, I see you girl. It sucks but you probably just destroyed and healed them at the same time. And people who need therapy the most still won’t go even after all that.
Which brings us to the ending. A beautiful one at that. It was interesting to see how the two of retreat to different rooms that resemble their state in life. Angela goes to Maggie’s room (their daughter) as if she’s oriented to the future. More concerned for her daughter and being happy going forward. And throughout the film it’s clear that her brimming anxiety is a result of pulling up Joe through life. She’s living for the both of them, dressing up the place, cleaning, putting up appearences, and acting like everything’s okay. Meanwhile Joe escapes to his office, clearly indicating how he’s still stuck the past where he was a musician and not a lowly music professor. He feels that life is happening to him and from him, he does not see his role in their marriage, and cannot feel the rewards he has. Which makes sense as the whole party is out of his comfort zone. He does not want to talk, to entertain, to put up appearances, and be nice. He wants to be miserable because that’s his comfort zone — he’s become married to his languish.
Our final moment in the film is of Joe playing his piano again. Established that he hasn’t touched it in years because of the bygone era (obviously trauma) and wasn’t ready to process that. This night clearly changed him, having him face a truth that he couldn’t say out loud until the end. Playing the piano is clearly emotionally unravelling for the both of them, after all the film starts with him teaching the notes to Angela and it bookends it with Angela joining him as the third hand of the piece. But she drops off, and he continues at a faster pace. She looks up to him, but he’s not there. It’s uncertain if she’s admiring his passion being lit up again or if she’s become sure that they cannot be together the way the were before. As Pina stated, a person can have only a few relationships in their life; and sometimes a new one can take the place of an old one. This gives us a seedling of hope that maybe Angela and Joe can start life from a new starting point. But it’s ambigious enough to show us that maybe it would be better for them to split. But it’s on Joe.
We know, throughout act 2 of the film, that Angela is ready to move on. Her small exploration in this swinger life displays that. Her knowingly displaying herself to Hawk, admiring Pina’s orgasms, and suggesting double penetration as a sex menu item indicate that she’s already tried to escape this mundanity. The prospect of swinging with the upstairs couple excites her because it offers her the path out. Joe sees it as a path for excitement in his boring life, but he doesn’t actually want to change to make it happen. Heck, when Pina’s creating the mood for him, he’s still in his clothes like an out of college virgin being invited to the bedroom for the first time. It’s interesting that at no point in the whole conversation that Angela and Joe see swinging as cheating on each other. After all, it can only be cheating if they actually…love each other. And thus, she’s gungho. But it’s only for herself — she knows implicitly that she cannot change Joe. She hopes Pina will for her, and that it would fix everything. But Angela herself isn’t making the move.
Another moment I admire is the small argument between Pina and Hawk over his overstepping her language barrier. It’s short and quickly subsides but it’s important as it subverts our understanding of their relationship. The film portrays them as a perfect couple. Both open, understanding, comfortable, and without envy. They play their plan in stride and speak in Spanish like romantics…or like bilingual parents who want to hide their conversation from the children. But seeing Pina stand up for herself, scold Hawk for his misstep, and control the dynamic makes us understand that even good couples will have their issues. That means if Angela and Joe were to rekindle, it wouldn’t be perfect still, and it never will be. A relationship is a compromise after all. You give up values, time, affection, energy to recieve it in kind and more. It has to be consensual and balanced or the scale tip and sway and who knows how messy the drop will be. And maybe Joe and Angela didn’t notice that for what it is, but we did. We saw know that even in their bond, there is some tugging.
There will still be some rough edges as every relationship is a messy compromise of values and personality and that’s okay. It just means that the two people in the relationship have to be okay with how much they give up and it’s clear neither Angela or Joe are happy with how much they have given up for this relationship to go on. The age-old excuse they give us is their daughter and that’s just so piss poor because once they say, it’s very clear that Pina gets upset because there’s another life that’s that’s hanging in the balance that has no control over what will happen to their future in this regard and that’s just very devious as parents. I appreciate that Pina frames it as a need to get themselves together or their daughter is going to build up unnecessary anxiety and undue stress that’s going to affect her in the future for her own reasons. And that’s true. As someone who has some psychology knowledge, admittedly not a lot, it’s very obvious that you know you can still have divorced parents, but if the parents are good and happy and healthy, you can still live a divorced parent lifestyle and not incur damaging significant trauma. I think that was the final blow and that was a great place for the movie to finally start rolling out the the ending and finish off the film with that beautiful ending. It was serene and it was peaceful and the fact that there were no words is exactly how it should be. Sometimes you just need to feel the relationship. You can’t always express it in words.
To me, personally, this film was a joyride. It was genuinely hilarious. I knew the nervous laughter in the theater slowly turn into confident chuckles meant the film was doing a great job. I especially love how a whole conversation about swinging and BDSM didn’t actually turn anyone off from the film, and kept the humor alive. It was interesting to me how topics that usually get their own full length film were nicely tucked inside, like Angela’s bisexuality (side note, Pina said she was bicurious, but anyone who knows anything about queer identity knows that bicuriousity is just a closeted way to say you’re bisexual…and she should know that as a psychiatrist), Joe’s repression, and getting pegged. I appreciate how in other films these topics would be the punchline of a forgotten joke but here it lets you laugh and then asks you to mature up because we’re going to be talking about this for the rest of the class — and that’s impactful in having the audience look past the spoken subject matter and read between the lines for the subtext. It’s why when the film enters it’s third act, I wasn’t actually surprised or shocked by the tonal shift, it was always there, boiling, ready to blow like an edging tea kettle (sorry for the analogy). And thus, I better see some Oscar nominations for these four actors.
9/10
Possibly a 10/10 but I would never watch this again, alone.
