The Invitation: Classic Vampire Cheese

By Lori Perkins

Let me start this article off by informing you that I cut my eyeteeth on the soap opera Dark Shadows, and discovered Salem’s Lot and Interview with the Vampire one summer when I was 14, so that should tell you that there was no way in hell that I was going to miss a chance to see The Invitation in a the dark embrace of a movie theater. Especially since it was being offered for $3 as part of that National Cinema Day sale on September 3rd. But, to my astonishment, I could not get a single friend to family member to join me, even if I offered to pay and threw in popcorn with the vampire cheese.

The plot is very simple – young woman learns she is related to a rich white family in England through DNA testing when a mysterious cousin pops up and invites her to a big fancy wedding to meet her new clan. In keeping with our newfound diversity plot points, our heroine is biracial, the love child of an uppercrust heiress and her Black footman, which was once a scandal, but is now a joy as the old family is thrilled to WELCOME NEW BLOOD into the fold. That alone should tell you where this is going.

The lord of the manor is hot and sexy (looks like a young Sean Connery – attention James Bond casting) and our ingénue is feisty but artistic (she’s a ceramic artist when not working in catering) and he is immediately smitten, and so is she, even though she’s had a lot of bad dreams in between the swooning (that’s called foreshadowing). When he proposes that they make this wedding a double wedding, and she jokingly accepts, she suddenly finds that he is NOT joking and that she has agreed to become the third of his vampire brides, uniting three old vampire blood lines.

It’s Dark Shadows meets Christopher Lee after that, with some nice vampire death scenes at the end.

The Invitation was exactly what I expected and I enjoyed every cheesy vampire trope-y moment, but I guess you have to know the sub-genre to really appreciate it.