Accepting THE INVITATION
Since its debut in 2015, THE INVITATION has given me the space to explore my lifelong relationship with grief.
Prologue
My father died in a car accident, on the street I grew up on, when I was 9 years old.
Since then, I’ve attempted to come to terms with that incredible loss through everything from cult-y self-help seminars to expensive psychotherapy. As a matter of objective fact, my father’s tragic death has shaped every part of me. I don’t like that the defining event of my life is an absence. I don’t like that it reveals what I don’t have, as opposed to what I do have. Yet, I don’t have to like it to accept it.
My dad was a comic book obsessive, an exceptional draftsman, and a relentless record collector. He was also an intensely beloved member of his community, but movies and doodling together were our shared vocabulary, where we could express ourselves with the same passion on equal footing.
Naturally, these attributes swim deep inside my marrow because of him. They also create important context for a film that has left such a deep, brand-like mark on me that it has radiated out from my DNA and taken shape in ways I never could have predicted.
Accept the Mystery
There’s a gem of a film that’s been neatly tucked away on Netflix for years now. A lean, 100 minute indie-suspense movie by the name of THE INVITATION. Though it premiered to audiences at film festivals and received a limited theatrical run, its virtual/streaming life has been the main source of its consumption. That’s how I came upon it when a friend suggested I seek it out in 2015.
I’m glad I did. I’m also glad I went in as cold as possible. The lack of preconceived notions combined with a cast of stellar-but-non-marquee names created the perfect conditions for me to be delightfully destabilized. The result was a maddening high that I’ve yet to experience anywhere else. By embracing the mystery and obfuscation that fuels the head (but not the heart) of this story, its impact was multiplied considerably. The film portrays a reunion of old friends — wherein a seemingly innocuous dinner party becomes a cold war of manners, waged with the artillery of grief, tragedy, and doctrine. While I’ve yet to replicate the visceral paranoia and adrenaline rush of that initial viewing (with this or any movie), countless rewatches have replaced it with something much deeper and more meaningful.
I used to say that THE INVITATION changed my life. Yet, after devoting to it so many repeat viewings that seem to unfurl with endless nuance, “change” simply isn’t a grand enough word. “Change” does not encompass the totality. The time I’ve invested in THE INVITATION has burst forward in a fractal of deeply gratifying and branching paths — from joy, to creation, to thorough self-discovery.
Accept the Cost
The film’s protagonist, Will (Logan Marshall-Green), is a character that faces a tragic, nightmarish loss. As a result, he is unapologetically in the throes of grief throughout the vast majority of the film. This experience makes him unpredictable, but it also gives him clarity regarding the fears and suspicions he harbors for his unsettling hosts (and their interloper guests).
Put simply, my journey as a person parallels that of Will’s. More accurately, my journey mirrors Will’s. We’re inverted reflections of each other. I lost a father, he lost a son. Unsurprisingly, he is incapable (or unwilling) to reconcile the shocking death of his offspring, Ty. He is actively indifferent towards living because despair makes up the vast, invisible ocean that has flooded his reality — wherein he can no longer discern or separate it from daily life. Anything less than full immersion in this pain would be a betrayal to the memory of his only child. He admits outright, “I’ve been waiting to die since the moment it happened.”
Not dissimilarly, I faced my own deep mourning period in the Autumn of 2019. After a particularly caustic break-up — which itself was directly preceded by my most harrowing battles with anxiety and self-harm — I felt the dim absence of vitality, and descended deeper into a trench of self-loathing and depression. My most reliable sanctuaries since childhood, such as drawing and listening to music, suddenly felt hollow, lethal, or both. As a lifelong illustrator and music addict, this was new, unexpected, and terrifying. It felt like there was no place to run, hide, or — most importantly — express myself. “Just give me a pain that I’m used to” I often thought.
I was the inversion of Will. His grief was stillwater: deep, quiet, even comfortable. Mine was as loud, fresh, and vexing as whitewater. Will knew his grief inside out — sprouting macabre, trenchant gills — while I, perhaps naively, was just trying to keep my head above the rapids.
Regardless of my dynamic relationship to those troubled waters, THE INVITATION simply gave me oxygen. It is an indelible, unshakeable story for me — my fascination with it stemming from its genuinely mature and complex depiction of loss. A depiction that has always felt true and authentic to the loss imprinted on me at age 9. That fascination was grimly rejuvenated when I felt as empty and unmoored as Will, except this time I was age 30. It was deepened more still when I chose to finally address my feelings on it in the most rigorous way imaginable.
Accept the Spark
The only outlet that gave me strength and inspiration during this time was one I had no previous or negative associations with: podcasting. It sounds like a joke. This form of media has become so saturated that merely starting one has become shorthand for cis-white guy mediocrity. I was painfully aware of this, which oddly empowered me to embrace a subject as niche and as specific as THE INVITATION. Not only did I want to explore something that hadn’t been talked about to death, I wanted to do so in an extremely thoughtful way, which meant meticulously scripting my analysis for each and every episode, which attacks the film and its screenplay in chronological order. For this reason, I consider my miniseries to be a collection of audio essays as much as I consider it a podcast.
I had been longing to intelligently articulate my feelings on THE INVITATION for years already, but I always thought it would come out in the form of a more traditional piece of writing. Yet, in realizing that there were a.) so many different aspects of the film I was interested in, and b.) that there was not that much existing criticism of the film, the longform medium of podcasting suddenly felt apt. Whereas approaching a film’s nuances scene-by-scene might be overwrought in purely written form, doing so within an aural saga somehow felt welcome and appropriate.
All that being said, the solitary early days of the podcast were just that: lonely. But they were also invigorating in the way that any creative spark is, where — even when the long term efforts are intimidating — they still elicit excitement and joy. That’s not to say I was instantly healed. God, no. But I had a place to concentrate the anger and hurt I was experiencing. It was a place where I felt nourished, rather than exhausted, from exorcising my trauma. Furthermore, I asked for help. Not just in making the podcast (my brother composed the original score and an ensemble of actors filled out the voice cast), but in rebuilding my life. I found a new therapist, which was a key component that can’t be overstated. I can still remember driving home after my first counseling session in January 2020. I thought to myself, “It feels like I can breathe again.” I’m still speaking, and breathing, with that same counselor today.
Professional help combined with a non-destructive conduit created a poignant ouroboros. They fed into and supported one another, transcending the cyclical to become spherical, giving me the opportunity to attain a new dimension.
Indeed, the beauty of not only accepting, but synthesizing, THE INVITATION — applying my own unique filter to its vital lens on the intersection of grief and decorum — meant constructing a new purpose for myself. Or, said another way: it meant believing in the power of my own narrative and point-of-view. Something which can only be done through vulnerable and honest introspection. I’ll admit it was difficult. But when your favorite actor tells you he can’t wait to hear your story, you’re left with little recourse.
Fast-forward to January 2021 and, after 15 intense months, I’ve finally completed all 15 episodes of An Invitation to THE INVITATION. I’ve published 11+ hours of immersive, fully-produced narration and disciplined analysis. I’ve interviewed the film’s writers (Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi), its star (the aforementioned Marshall-Green), its heavy (the maybe-Zodiac John Carroll Lynch), and its precognitive director (Karyn Kusama) — all of whom I consider heroes.
I always intended for An Invitation to THE INVITATION to carry me through a dark period, but even I was surprised by the momentum it provided (which was oddly heightened by the added weight of the pandemic). I mention this because, amid the writing and producing of my strangely personal miniseries, I also chose to apply to graduate school. Even with a deep portfolio informed by years of freelance storyboard work and numerous glowing letters of recommendation, it was far from a sure thing that I’d be accepted to the (only) university I applied to. Then, on Wednesday, November 25th, 2020 I was accepted into the Savannah College of Art and Design’s (SCAD) Master of Fine Arts Program. I was also awarded SCAD scholarships for a total of $13,000 per academic year.
Yet, before I had the strength to find a compatible therapist, and before I had the confidence to apply to grad school, I simply had myself and my love for a movie that made me feel seen.
Accept the Crisis
By the time the 3rd act of the film arrives, Will’s worst fears have been multiplied and exacerbated — cascading with a visceral terror that messily crashes into every single character, leaving no one unscathed. Fittingly, this quintessentially interior, single-location film becomes a nesting doll of increasingly claustrophobic and chilling consequences. However, within this heart-stopping display of mundanity-and-manners turned inside out, a character arc emerges.
The man who has been waiting to die finds his will to live again.
It took me 15 months to see how this arc reflected my own, or rather, how this arc was (without me realizing it) a roadmap. An aspiration. Yet, when I saw how I seemed to inadvertently be tracing Will’s footsteps, it finally seemed to articulate what I had been searching for inside of this film for so long: the proof that purpose and vitality can always be reclaimed, even under the most dire of circumstances.
Thus, there’s a difficult lesson embedded in Will’s ability to find the strength and desire to stay alive when the shrapnel of fresh horror eviscerates him and everyone else’s evening. While Will and I’s stories have their obvious differences, one thing that we both share is the knowledge that crisis has a way of stunting one’s life and/or accelerating its growth.
The radical honesty that perpetual mourning grants to Will violates many of the social contracts we sign as people, which gets him into repeated trouble. Yet, this same attribute not only gets him out of trouble, it saves his life and the lives of his partner, Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi), and dear friend, Tommy (Mike Doyle). They, in turn, save him. Vulnerability begets mutual compassion.
What begins as a haunting for Will at the film’s start transforms into a form of second sight, or more accurately: an ability to see through the haze of social manipulation and everyday power dynamics. Thus, Will’s “weakness” becomes his superpower. His vulnerability becomes an asset: something profound and heroic. Rather, it always was an asset. Unfortunately, it seemed to require an excruciating catalyst to realize its full capacity — or, more concisely, a crisis.
As horrifying as THE INVITATION can be on an emotional and corporeal level, that same quality forges a solidarity with the horror and grief of its viewers’ own lives (much like it did with me). Moreover, its chilling yet beautiful final image — a thematically terrifying and visually stunning view of the Hollywood Hills — proffers an uncomfortable yet important truth. The truth that beauty and violence, empathy and antipathy, joy and despair, vitality and depression, often overlap and exist side-by-side.
Reconciling these common contradictions can be painful, but it is a dissonance worth grappling with. That exact dissonance is what I wrestled with for months at my lowest — feeling shameful about my past yet hopeful for my future. To accept “tragedy and delight, hand in hand,” is a mantra worth repeating. If we can’t see or sense the beauty amidst tragedy, then the seductive magnetism of suffering may simply become too much for us to bear.
Accept What is Present
I’ve never liked talking about myself, but I now know that sharing my story is an important, maybe even essential, thing to do. One of the many gifts THE INVITATION has given to me is the space and the safety to finally do so in a meaningful way. Sharing a glimpse of my journey is now cathartic instead of petrifying. That alone is something I’m intensely grateful for. Like the beginning of this essay states, my father died in a car accident when I was 9 years old, and it has shaped every part of me. I’m grateful for that, too, in a way, because it has taught me what I value most. It brings what’s present into high relief: immaterial things like human connection, artistic expression, and vibrant creation.
It has also taught me acceptance, which may very well be THE INVITATION’s most crucial and lasting sentiment. As Karyn Kusama describes it, the “tyranny of denial” often fuels our fear of any negative, painful emotion. Subsequently, denial mutes our humanity which smothers our empathy. In other words, we have to truly feel what we’re feeling in order to grow and in order to help others. Vulnerability begets mutual compassion.
Some search their entire lives for this kind of clarity, but crisis (as we know) has a way of accelerating growth and, yes, changing one’s life.
Indeed, I used to say that THE INVITATION changed my life. Yet, as I prepare to start a new chapter, “change” no longer comes close to describing what it actually did.
It saved it.
