52 Films by Women Vol 7. 4. THE INVITATION (Director: Jessica M. Thompson)
Contains spoilers Incredibly, The Invitation , the email-order bride vampire film (not hard to work out the twist) is the first film directed by a woman to top the US Box Office charts in 2022. Admittedly, the weekend of 26-28 August was described as slow, with audiences insufficiently tempted by Idris Elba as a Djinn offering Tilda Swinton three wishes in Three Thousand Years of Longing (subtitle: ‘… gives me such a crick in the neck’). An estimated gross of $7 million doesn’t make it the highest opening film directed by a woman so far this year – that would be Where the Crawdads Sing – but it does show the enduring power of genre. Originally entitled ‘The Bride’ (let’s forget the Jennifer Beals-Sting movie of the same name) it stars Nathalie Emmanuel as Evie, a catering assistant and would-be potter hired for swanky launches who gets to keep a goodie bag. This, gentle reader, is a cautionary tale. You might think its great to swipe freebies at an awards ceremony or similar, b...