The Invitation

Directed by Jessica M. Thompson (The Light of the Moon) and starring Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones, Furious 7), The Invitation looks to be fairly standard horror fare courtesy of Sony Pictures.

After a five second micro-teaser—still a promotional tactic for some campaigns in 2022, albeit not all—The Invitation starts slow, with a meditative, single piano note: still a favoured trope and go-to tactic in contemporary trailer music.

Other instruments populate the sonic landscape as dialogue comes in, with strings appearing by 0:13. In a move that is a bit too well edited to be coincidental, at 0:14 we hear an off-screen, diegetic message notification sound—mixed far in front—whose tone shifts the soundtrack from something more ambiguous to a major key. Notice also the use of the occasional diegetic sound mixed far in front afterwards, such as the plate at 0:26. At 0:36, the soundtrack shift eerily upwards as the protagonist’s cousin tells her that everyone is “dying” to meet her; so far, the trailer focuses on confidently subtle shifts in the musical arrangement to complement the diegetic narrative.

At 0:57, the music cuts out for the first time, leading to a more ominous soundscape with lower tones, in part complementing the predominantly night time scenes for this second half. If in the first half the synch points felt a little more coincidental, in this second half they are far more prominent: the clinking of glasses to the beat at 1:17 is nigh-unmissable, as is the sound of a nail file a moment later. A nail clipper at 1:23 and later sounds unnaturally crunchy—the first aural cue of overt horror.

The last half minute then turns to fairly standard horror fare—note at 1:48 how, after the off-screen decapitation, a high pitch sounds as if to emulate disorientation and dizziness as if in response to what the protagonist just witnessed—the sound of the hosts laughing working in counterpoint, lending a further sense of surreality to the proceedings. Notice how Nathalie’s character banging on the door also works musically, much in the trailer music tradition of epic percussion leading to a climactic moment, in triplets; even though this is primarily a horror trailer, the editors find a way to bring in this aural tropes in the arrangement.

The final scene including a ticking motif that we’ve also heard in many recent trailers—perhaps simply as a good way to communicate helplessness against inevitability. In a bit of a twist, the post-title scene seems to involve the protagonist fighting back—almost a teaser in itself, post trailer.

The Invitation arrives in theatres August 26th.

— Curtis Perry