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Released by: Unearthed Films
Released on: January 24th, 2023.
Director: Kevin Ko
Cast: Ray Chang, Julianne Chu, Maria Ozawa
Year: 2006
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Invitation Only – Movie Review:
Director Kevin Ko’s 2009 film Invitation Only opens in a night club where beautiful women bump and grind on each other and the crowd around them dances the night away. One of these women heads to the ladies room to fix her makeup and soon finds a severed head stashed away in her handbag!
From here we meet an everyman named Wade Chen (Ray Chang). He works as a chauffeur and needs to basically make himself available to his employer at any time. When Wade catches a rich man named Mr. Yang (Jerry Chih-Wei Huang) having sex with a model named Dana (Japanese AV star Maria Ozawa), Yang offers Wade the chance to attend an exclusive party in his stead, posing as Yang's nephew. It's the type of party where the richest of the rich show up to make connections and enjoy some deviant behavior, and Wade accepts the offer.
A short time later, Wade arrives at a non-descript warehouse in a bad part of town where he meets the host, Warren (Kristian Brodie), and realizes there are four other guests in attendance: a hotel owner named Hitomi (Julianne Chu), woman about town named Holly (Vivi Ho), an aspiring politician named Lin (Joseph Ma), and a famous pianist named Richard Kao (Ying-Hsuan Kao). Warren had each attendee write down their biggest wish on their invitation and then offers to grant it to them, and then things get strange and ultimately pretty grisly when Richard winds up dead at the hands of a lunatic in a mask with a penchant for stabbing!
While Invitation Only does deal in some pretty obvious genre clichés as its story plays out, director Ko still manages to create some decent tension in the film’s second half, even if ultimately we’ve got a pretty good idea of where this is all headed. At times the movie feels like it’s influenced by better known American pictures like the Hostel or Saw films, going for that gritty, gory vibe that those pictures offered up in plentiful doses, though it does so with a bit of a Taiwanese twist, making the movie stand out just a bit (though not that much) from its Hollywood counterparts. A little more originality would have gone a long way here, and we don’t get that, but Ko’s direction is more than competent and the movie is paced well and features some effectively grisly effects set pieces.
Performances are pretty decent across the board. Ray Chang plays his ‘soon over his head’ character pretty effectively. While we know he’s lied his way into all of this, we don’t dislike him and can side with him enough to hope he makes it out once the killing starts. Kristian Brodie plays his mysterious ‘host’ character pretty effectively, while supporting work from lovely actresses Julianne Chu and Vivi Ho is decent if not super remarkable.
Invitation Only – Blu-ray Review:
Invitation Only arrives on a region free 25GB Blu-ray disc with the AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.78.1 widescreen with the ninety-five minute feature using up 23.2GBs of space. Shot digitally, the transfer would seem to be a pretty accurate representation of the imperfect source material. Some shots look crisp and nicely detailed, others are flat and exhibit some crush in darker moments. Overall, however, this looks pretty decent given how it was shot even if the source material is inherently soft at times.
Audio options are provided in 24-bit DTS-HD Mandarin 5.1 and 24-bit LPCM 2.0 Stereo options as well as in 24-bit DTS-HD Spanish 5.1 with optional subtitles available in English only. The 5.1 mix isn’t mind blowing, but it’s good. You’ll really notice the rear channels in action during the party sequence that opens the film and when sound effects and the score kick into gear in a few scenes. The track is balanced, clean and clear and the subtitles are easy to read.
Extras start off with a behind the scenes featurette that runs six minutes and is made up of footage shot on set during the making of the movie and brief interviews with Ko and a few of the cast members. It isn't super in-depth but it does at least offer a look at what it was like on set.
Aside from that, we get original and Spanish language trailers for the feature, a still gallery, bonus trailers for a few other Unearthed Films releases (2LDK, Tokyo Decadence, Evil Dead Trap and Evil Dead Trap 2: Hideki), static menus and chapter selection options. This release also comes packaged with some reversible cover sleeve art.
Invitation Only - The Final Word:
Invitation Only doesn’t reinvent the wheel but the performances are decent, the gore scenes are well done and the movie does generate some tension in spite of the fact that it does deal in more than a few genre clichés. The Blu-ray edition from Unearthed Films presents the movie looking true to source with good audio and a handful of minor extras. If not absolutely essential, it’s a decent package for a decent film.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Invitation Only Blu-ray screen caps!
