Death by Invitation

There are only two saving graces here, the great soundtrack of oddball library prog-rock-ish music and the smoking hot lead (who is still a terrible actress). Everything else is amateur hour, the editing, the direction, the sets, the effects, EVERYTHING. This is boredom central and should be avoided at all costs.

I like bad movies. Or, shall I say movies so bad that they are funny--such as "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "The Apple", "The Room" or "Robot Monster". However, there is another type of bad movie that I simply cannot stand--BORING bad movies. These are movies that you can't even enjoy on a camp level and they therefore have nothing to offer. "Death by Invitation" is clearly in the latter category. Now this truly is amazing given the plot--as almost any director should have been able to make this interesting--any director but Ken Friedman that is. While he might be a very nice person and has written a few good films, when it comes to directing, this is not his forte and this first directorial effort possibly is the reason he's directed very few films.

The film is about a lady whose ancestor was killed during the witch trials*. Now, centuries later, she is out to avenge this death by killing the relatives of her killers. And what is her weapon? UTTER AND COMPLETE BOREDOM!!! A great example of this is relatively early in the film when instead of just killing some bad actor (and wow, he was bad), she talked on and on and on about some tribe of female warriors. As for the killing, you really couldn't even see how it happened...nor did you care. You just wanted it to get moving! Add to that that normal incidental music was absent and you've got a ponderous scene and a ponderous movie. Add to that that the cast was made up of mostly first-time actors, very bad editing and composition, a first-time director and a budget (I'm guessing here) of about $324 and you've got a lousy picture. I have actually seen worse films (hence the score of 2) but few that were as dull as this one.

I agree with the other reviews - so why am i writing. Because watching this actually made me angry. I've dabbled in low-budget filmmaking and its a real challenge. But there is no excuse for two things: 1. an absolute crap script. 2. Tedium in the locations you choose. Follow the rules set down by low-budget filmmakers from the past and don't do what Herschel Gordon Lewis did and shoot against ugly walls in boring living rooms. This film has one scene after another take place at a dinner table. Also, did anyone have any fun whatsoever in making this film? There is little joy in evidence. Hard for me to believe our writer/director went on to write White Line Fever. there is no talent whatsoever in evidence in this ludicrous, uninteresting, incomplete, incompetent script.

Reborn in modern times, the ancestor of a crucified witch begins a path of vengeance against the descendants of those who targeted her as the burgeoning body count forces a skeptical police officer to stop the rampage.

This is one of the most bland and lifeless of the kind of films of the genre. This is merely due to one important factor where it's so light on horror hardly anything really happens here. Instead, this one turns into such a talky, drama-centered film that this one eats up nearly a third on its running time on several different monologues that just eat up time here doing nothing but generate extreme boredom recounting a story about her encounter with the Devil that would've been better served as an on-screen flashback instead of a dialogue-only sequence, or even the unimportant tale about the female warrior tribe which is just endless, tiresome and has little to do with the movie itself which all combined together make it's inclusion an incredibly weird one but the decision to make it last so long is really puzzling and troublesome for the film as a whole. The revenge tactics employed here are mostly done off-camera and quite rarely make for interesting viewing as to how it plays out here with such a decided lack of interesting moments as the entire film goes through the notion of not following through with anything of value. The attempts at building suspense by focusing on the family around her going about their lives are just flat-out boring, the scenarios presented here are even more so and it really features nothing even remotely engaging or enjoyable. The only remotely tolerable part is the finale, where the full revenge is accomplished in a remotely engaging manner, but it really is just the one scene here that works while nearly everything else here is a disaster.

Rated R: Violence and Language.

Yes, much of the film is awkward, it's full of plot holes and script deficiency...but it has a persistent, understated tone of menace that keeps a viewer involved. This low-budget chiller deserves a lot more credit than it gets. There are several horrific murders of youngsters perpetrated by the vengeful witch with no-one catching on to her precisely because of the rather dull and commonplace behavior she exhibits when around other people. That's exactly how real life serial killers get on with it...they can appear quite normal most of the time. Shelby Leverington delivers this quality brilliantly, resembling a near-somnolent Shelley Long. Those heavy-lidded eyes and that sly smirk that appears on her face hint at the triumphant evil underneath the nice girl-next-door facade. Norman Parker is very good as Jake, as well. A prime target for victim-hood, you keep wondering if he's going to wind up in a dripping body bag himself. Only the fact that he's not one of the marked descendants and has sufficient machismo to nullify this female's blood urge allows him to short-circuit his vulnerability, but he still winds up being manipulated into struggling with the justifiably crazed father who comes after the witch with an axe, only to be nearly decapitated during the melee. With much of the plot involving gruesome child murders it was actually a pretty brilliant move to maintain a pedestrian feel to the film. On a bigger budget it could have been done much more effectively, but even sans slick cinematography and a coherent script it still has lingering chills, solely due to the skills of Leverington and Parker.