Shudder usually has a lot of original movies this time of year. Some are good, some are not so good. Today, I’m going to take a look at Who Invited Them to see if we should invite them.
Adam (Ryan Hansen) and Margo (Melissa Tang) have bought a new house in the Hollywood Hills. Of course, they throw a lavish housewarming party, inviting all of their friends and coworkers and bosses. As the party simmers down for the night, one couple sticks around much longer than the other guests. Realizing that neither of them invited the mysterious couple, Adam and Margo try to get them to leave. But when it turns out that Tom (Timothy Granaderos) and Sasha (Perry Mattfeld) are the neighbors, the homeowners decide to get to know them better and spend the evening drinking and laughing and talking and snorting coke. When the evening starts getting really weird, Adam and Margo begin to suspect that their neighbors aren’t who they say they are. If only they knew the truth behind the “couple.”
Who Invited Them is a weird movie. For a majority of the runtime, nothing happens. I kept waiting for a jump scare or one of the couples to break and kill the other. However, all we get is a lot of talking. Sure, the movie is pretty suspenseful but it takes a very long time to get to the pay off.
My other issue is that there are a lot of questions at the end of the movie. They aren’t good questions like “Did they get away with it” or “What happens next?” Instead, they are questions like “What was the point of this character” and “What happened to everyone else?” There just isn’t a lot of resolution to be had here. Maybe the original plan was to make the movie longer or maybe they plan on having a sequel. As a movie on it’s own, though? It isn’t satisfying enough to justify watching it, which makes me sad because I enjoyed the suspense. But you can’t have a movie that is all suspense and no payoff.
Unless you literally have nothing else to watch, I would recommend staying away from Who Invited Them. All it is going to do is make you long for a better movie.