Invitation Only — Invitation Only(Blu Ray)
Invitation Only is an early 2000’s Taiwanese horror film, which blends ‘n’ blurs together elements of slasher and torture porn genres The film regards a group of five people invited to a corporate event- hoping to have their true dreams/ wants fulfilled, but instead things turn decidedly bloody ‘n’ brutal. Here from Unearthed Films is a Blu-Ray release of the film.
Invitation Only (original title Jue Ming Pai Dui) is from the year 2009 and claims to be Taiwan’s first-ever slasher film. The film was directed by Taipei City-born Kevin Ko, and this was his debut film. He’s gone onto four other feature lengths- these go from comedy-drama Doomsday Reverse (2012), romantic comedy Dude's Manual (2018), fantasy action comedy A Choo (2020), and back to horror with Incantation (2023). Invitation Only is well realized, executed, and fair-budgeted film- and as debut goes it’s impressive enough. Though it does often liberally mimic/ at points wholesale steal elements from western horror films.
The film kicks off with a pre-credits night club set sequence- as we see a female clubber taking a powered room break. On the counter is a large expensive looking handbag- and while fixing her hair, she keeps glancing at the bag. She soon moves down the shadowy doorways of the cubicles, and Ko certainly manages to create a nicely eerie slasher atmosphere, which is bookend by a deep throat slashing.
As we get into the film we meet our lead character Wade Chen (Ray Chang) a twenty-something chauffeur who drives for smug, sleek, and cheating-in-the-back-of-cars corporate boss President Yang(Jerry Chih-Wei Huang).
One day while driving his boss Wade is offered a ticket for a swish corporate event, as Yang has other plans- and he tells Wade to say at the door he’s his cousin.
That evening Wade turns up at a large estate for the event, and it initially seems to be the night of his life. He wins very big on the roulette wheel, beds a magazine model he fancied, and gets given as his wish a sports car. But things suddenly turn, as he & four other new guests are separated- they are shown footage indicating that none of them of what they claimed to be when they arrived. And as things unfold we get a mix of brutal 90’s slasher & torture porn- with characters being stalked & killed by featureless white mask killers, or tortured on stage in front of an audience of the event's attendees.
Acting wise Chang sells well enough the slight naïve chauffer, and the rest of the cast is good enough too- with the four other chosen ones being fairly memorable. Gore wise we get more than a few deep throat slitings, fingers looped off, Achilles heel slicing, genital torture through underwear followed by victims throw up, face slicing that get rubbed with salt, and as the Blu-Ray cover suggests a gruelling face stapling.
The film does take a little while to warm up /take off- yes, we have the great pre-credits scene- but otherwise, for half an hour or so, it’s largely a bloodless/non-horror affair. As we do get into the more horror side of things we clearly have two key influences here- 90’s US slashers and the Hostel films, with at points some very familiar scenarios occurring like a still alive body on a body part-piled cart, hiding near dead/ decay bodies, and a few of the knife attacks feel very familiar.
The region Blu-Ray takes in just the film, behind-the-scenes gallery, and a few trailers. As this is a modern film the scan is good/ clean/ defined, with easily readable English subtitles.
On the whole, Invitation Only is a passable blend of torture porn/ slasher genres. I guess as this appears on Unearthed I was expecting it to be a little more extreme on the gore/ torture, but really this is at the level of the Hostel films in its content- so take from that what you will. It’s certainly interesting to see Taiwanese take on these two popular horror genres, but if you are fairly familiar with both genres you may find this a little frustrating. I wanted to give this two & a half out of five, but as we only do full marks here- I’ve gone for a two mark.