Interview (Written): Karyn Kusama and Phil Hay (“The Invitation”)

A Screen Crush interview with Karyn Kusama (co-writer and director) and Phil Hay (co-writer) from the movie The Invitation:

We’re all familiar with the “comedy of errors” concept, but The Invitation is basically the first “horror of manners.”

Karyn Kusama: Yes, yes.

Phil Hay: Do you mind if we use that?

By all means, go ahead! But much of the film deals with the uncomfortable lengths people go to in order to remain polite — was that what you were going for?

Hay: It’s something we discovered.

Kusama: We discovered it once we saw actors sitting in these spaces. Because it’s very easy to read a script and say, well, wouldn’t somebody dispute this or fight back to the ideas being presented over the course of the evening? Or wouldn’t it be more immediately combative, and it’s like, no. I think actually these are old friends who are trying to repair something that’s been ruptured, and once we saw the actors in the space, we realized, oh, there’s a lot of attempting to protect what was lost.

Hay: And like a duty to stick it through. Which is weird, thematically, the whole thing of like, really facing stuff. Or trying to put it aside, get it out of your face and get away from it. It became more and more obvious… and also to feel how transgressive it wouldn’t actually be. You know, people are like, “Well I would leave,” and it’s like, maybe.

Kusama: Would you leave?

Aside from the horror of manners angle, there’s also a lot about grief and the different ways that people cope, and the different ways that people think we should be coping — which is where that frailty comes in.

Hay: That was really core for us.

Kusama: I think that was a driving force for making this movie.

Hay: Probably the first thing that was in there was our desire to talk about grief and our own experiences with that. It’s interesting to find a home to talk about that in a horror movie or a thriller because in a weird way for me, that’s where you do that. In a way, that’s what these movies are for is to animate these important and scary emotions in a story so that you can actually deal with it and interact with it. So that was the process for both Matt [Manfredi, co-writer] and I, and Karyn directing, and us making the movie all together. It was all about grief.

And about the longing for something that’s gone, and being haunted — not literally haunted, maybe, but haunted by who you were and what you had and what you lost, and how you can never get that back. That was all very much baked into the whole process.

The way we grieve also ties back into manners in that the ways we choose or need to cope are often judged, and can be perceived as inappropriate.

Kusama: Absolutely. There’s a desire for us, societally and culturally to move past uncomfortable feelings as quickly as possible.

But not too quickly.

Kusama: Right, right, right! There’s rules. I guess the bottom line is there’s a lot of rules, and there’s a lot about other people’s tolerance for pain — your pain and one’s own pain, and how that’s a really difficult thing to navigate.

Hay: And about how sometimes… I think there’s a little scene where Gina is talking to Will, and he’s distracted looking at what’s happening at the door. And the point of that scene, and I love the way Michelle [Krusiec] played it, is it’s so complicated because she’s trying to help him and show that she cares about him. But that speech and
what she says is animated by trying to get herself off the hook for not behaving, in her mind, the way you’re supposed to behave to a grieving person.

Kusama: And what she’s sort of admitting is, “I wasn’t there for you. I’ve kind of been absent for the past few years and I’m sorry.

Hay: Because unfortunately that is part of that experience sometimes. It can be very isolating and even really well-intentioned people don’t know what to do.

Here is a trailer for the movie:

The movie is in theaters and on VOD as of this weekend.

For the rest of the interview, go here.