Watched the U.S.A.'s 2022 The Invitation (1:44:45), a modern-gothic horror movie with a classic, albeit unexpected, twist. Evelyn Alexander, recently orphaned and working for a living as a catering crew member. sends her DNA sample to an online service that offers to trace people's existing relatives all over the world. The search leads her to second cousin Oliver Alexander from England, who invites her to Whitney, Yorkshire, to attend a wedding and meet her other long-lost relatives. Evelyn accepts the invitation on an all-expenses, paid trip to a breathtaking mansion named New Carfax Abbey, where she meets and is attracted to handsome but mysterious Walter De Ville, lord of the manor. Very soon, however she observes that the mansion, Walter himself, and all of her long-lost relatives are keeping a dark secret from which she eventually attempts to extricate herself.
While this movie makes a satisfying screening with no letdown ending, the first three-fourths is nothing more than a prolonged process of flirtation. One gets the feeling that the production is a dark, Hallmark romance originally written for Meghan Markle, what with the lead performer's being a look-alike and the story essentially that of a middle-class American woman suddenly thrust into aristocracy.
You get how this is really a cinematic prank on the audience toward the conclusion, when Evelyn runs to a cottage for help and is met there by a familiar couple (whose names I will not mention), harking back to a much older story with much older characters.
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