I get the meaning that it wasn't just that house, it was a city-wide cult massacre. But this changes the whole film, from something that felt personal into some shared emergency like The Walking Dead. Can't think of any reason for that, except The Invitation II
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I thought it was just meant to show the rapture or whatever their cult was praying to was real - ie it was the end of the world.
shareTHAT would have been an interesting twist, but it was never clear before or after it happened.
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Initially that is what I thought also, though I have considered that perhaps it was just a sign of this cult being a bit more far reaching then expected... But it would be wayyy cooler if it was confirmation of the cult's rapture as you said. Either way, I dug the movie, and the ending didn't bother me one bit.
shareI kind of like the idea that it actually is the end of the world, and that they are putting their loved ones out of their misery, and saving them from the horror of the apocalypse.
Eden specifically seems to want to kill Will as a result of caring about him. The whole party seemed like a goodbye to old friends.
Perhaps this cult was all about a goodbye and toast to the end of the world with loved ones.
The Invitation (the cult) had members in other houses in the same neighborhood. That's what I got from it. Makes sense to me, and I don't think it necessarily suggests a city-wide massacre. Probably just a few clusters of swanky homes.
For what it's worth, I saw the film as a critique of certain "new age" value systems - specifically the idea that one can (and perhaps should) eliminate unhappiness and stress by denying unpleasant aspects of reality. The members of The Invitation choose death as the ultimate antidote to the pain of life and see nothing wrong with making the same choice on behalf of others. Their narcissism is so complete that it extends even to the cold-blooded murder of those they supposedly love.
With that in mind, the film's setting is crucial to its theme. It depends on a culture that finds its apotheosis in the Hollywood hills.
no one is interested in your underwater communist barrels
It's not setting up a sequel. It's accentuating the horror of the whole thing. At the end, you realize it's not just a small group of nut jobs who did this, but that it was more global, and that all these people in the Hills were suffering from grief and so lost that they fell victim to this night. I thought it was very powerful and chilling, one of the best things about the film.
shareJesus Christ, half of this thread is people name-calling and nitpicking spelling & grammar.
Personally I didn't take it to mean that it was a city-wide event. Looked to me more of an isolated incident in that area. Much more plausible and believable than if it were the entire city which would be ridiculous if that's what was intended. Either way, it's not a pandemic as someone else suggested.
8/10 for me. Would've been a 9.5 or 10 if it weren't for the serious pacing issues which, for the most part, were easy to look past due to the awesome tension-building throughout the rest of the film.
I'm baffled by this thread. We're told very early in the film that this "invitation" movement has a surprising number of followers. The one character says his boss is part of it, the dude from Game of Thrones says 1000s of people practice it.
There's nothing unbelievable about cult wackers like this planning their mass homicide/suicides for the same time. We saw the video on the laptop where the leader was seemingly giving the final command, he even used the word "tonight" if i recall. It seems quite clear this would have been sent out to all the folks he deemed trustworthy to carry it out(we hear game of thrones doucher say something to the effect of, "he chose us") that night.
It in no way changes the whole film. Adding this nightmarish scope to the cult and its homicidal plan in no way alters the personal side of the plot/characters or the intimacy we share with them, all of which makes up the overwhelming majority of the screentime.
It only serves to add more horror and even substance, rather than take anything away.
It changes the entire theme of the film, from good defeating bad, to bad defeating good.
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What I was thinking at the end at first was that the three of them better get the hell out of the house and on down the road because I didn't trust that Pruitt was really dead. Having him get up and come after them would have been cheesy as hell, but I didn't know for sure if the director could be trusted not to do that. Then when they saw the red lanterns and the sirens going off all over the hills I started to think they should hide in the house because there were more cultists out there and with all those emergencies it might take forever for the police to get there and help them. Then again, if the cult's overall plan was for all of them to commit suicide while taking their friends and family with them, the fact that there were so many sirens going off means that there were a lot of other people out there in exactly the same situation where the cult members didn't manage to kill them, as evidenced by the fact they were able to call 911.
shareI think they were trying to show in a way that a large amount of us are deeply damaged and could be persuaded into something like that. Also that people in general (esp. in Hollywood) are way too quick to follow these days. For me, I just liked the overall sense of panic and dread it added to the end of the film.
An R Rated Youtube Movie Channel. Bong.
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I think they were trying to show in a way that a large amount of us are deeply damaged
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There is nothing confusing about the ending at all.
It was a mass cult suicide, that occurred throughout the area.
Needing to have things spoonfed to you does not mean you have high standards, nor does it make you of some higher intelligence.
I thought it was interesting and the scariest part of this entire movie because it was deliberately planned.
But seriously, I'm not sure whats so hard to understand about it... A mass cult suicide occurred. Some people probably drank the koolaid while others figured things out like the main character and started to fight back/struggle.
Your still confused; the question isn't about what happened, that was obvious. The question was why they chose to add that odd ending to a movie which already had a well-done conclusion.
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If it's a mass cult suicide, why do they need to kill their friends? Were killing their friends a way to achieve a higher plane of existence? What we all the helicopters about? Were they part of the cult and intended to wipe out any survivors? Things don't have to spoon-fed; they just need to make watching the movie worth our time. This was a boring movie other than a ten-minute chase-and-hide sequence, and then seemed not to have any plan, so it just ended. It doesn't take a higher intelligence to see that this movie just wasn't thought-out at all.
share