You know that feeling when you desperately have to go to the bathroom while in a public place but you have nowhere to turn? You’re expected to be on your best behavior since you’re in public, but you’re too nervous to tell anyone about your digestive emergency. You could be trapped in a restaurant booth between two idiots who aren’t listening to your pleas to escape, or you could be walking alone in an expansive park under the hot sun with no toilet in sight.
That specific kind of anxiety, mixing anger with embarrassment with frustration, is something many of us have felt before. And viewers will feel this same anxiety, and more, when watching the new dark comedy “The Invite” currently playing in select theaters. And by the way, this film has no anxiety surrounding bathroom activities.
A deeply unhappy married couple, Joe and Angela, host a small dinner in their apartment to officially meet their upstairs neighbors, Hawk and Pina. Angela wants everything to be perfect to make the best impression, but Joe doesn’t even want the dinner to happen. Their tension spills into the small talk with their guests, and all polite decorum eventually gets thrown in the garbage. Each person reveals secrets, makes jokes, and confronts taboos turning the ordinary night into emotional and physical chaos.
“The Invite” is an entertaining comedy of manners with cutting sarcasm, poignant judgement, and razor-sharp timing. But this film has existed in multiple forms before its release to the world. Francesc Gay, a filmmaker and writer from Spain, first wrote this story as a play called “The Neighbors Upstairs” which was first produced in Spain in 2016. The play was adapted into a Spanish language film in 2020, directed by Francesc Gay, and for some reason has two different titles (“The People Upstairs” and “Sentimental”).
“The Neighbors Upstairs” play was also adapted into the German language film, “The Neighbours from Upstairs” released in 2023. So this entire property and concept has been adapted for the big screen before any English language treatment.
The humorous qualities are so rich in this I spent half the film laughing and the other half holding my breath from surprise. Olivia Wilde ("Don't Worry Darling," 2022) and Seth Rogen ("The Studio," 2025-2026) show great chemistry as the miserable spouses in this 1 hour 47-minute run-time, and such chemistry is no small feat since they carry most of the film with agile dialogue and cringey physicality.
“The Invite” has the playful mischief of the 2011 film “Carnage” combined with the serious domestic pressure of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966). (Both of these other films are also adaptations of beloved works of live theater.) "The Invite" also harkens back to the independent sex comedy, "Hump Day" (2009).
While the ending gets a bit too sappy, cumbersome, and predictable, turning the dinner into an earnest unnecessary therapy session, “The Invite” is a great outlet for adults to let loose and enjoy some raunchy relatable fun.
As a director, Olivia Wilde may not have had much success with her last film, “Don’t Worry Darling” (2022), but she’s clearly having an amusing time here. When you put the stereotypical behaviors of men and women under a microscope, who knows what revelations you might find.
