Sometimes bosses can be a bunch of monsters. ‘The Invitation‘ is a short film about such a boss that you have certainly seen in most movies about the world of corporations. But this boss is „literally” a monster. Thus, things take a totally unexpected turn, and the result can be as shocking as funny for the audience passionate about cynical experiments, with a fine sense of black humour. Director Thorsten Schade juggles in this project with seemingly incompatible stylistic registers, suddenly introducing an element of surprise that he integrates in a homogeneous manner in the narrative mechanism of this film. This unexpected transition from the dramedy of an employee who wants at all costs to impress his eccentric boss to a horror with parody accents is reminiscent of the shock we feel watching, for example, Quentin Tarantino’s ‘From Dusk till Dawn’. Thus, despite appearances, everything becomes a kind of bloody ritual, as both the protagonist and the spectator enter the universe of a diabolical clan ready to suck the blood of employees who are not physically and mentally prepared to rise in the hierarchy of the company they serve.
When his boss invites him to his house, Renner knows he is going to face a turning point in his career. It’s all or nothing. Surprises, however, do not hesitate to appear, and everything becomes a cat-and-mouse game in which someone has to die.
The sudden transitions through which the director fluctuates between the neurotic calm of the protagonist and the adrenaline-filled moments, between the icy quietness of the social context and the almost Dionysian madness of the diabolical ritual are conducted by a sure and bold vision using a well-mastered image. Somehow, Thorsten Schade seems to be making a bet on himself, aiming to test his stylistic versatility, and this is visible in the way in which the spectators’ expectations are totally deceived. At the same time, this short film manages to overcome the limited demands of a light horror experiment and as a result, it can be received as a metaphor about the more or less extreme compromises the modern individual faces in their attempt to meet the demands of capitalist society. In this sense, ‘The Invitation’ is a darkly humorous film that hides a kind of macabre fantasy equivalent to the great cinematic dystopias, highlighting the “corporatocracy” statute of today’s world.
