Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Mischa Barton, Chris Browning, Bianca A. Santos, Giles Matthey, Grace Lynn Kung, Seamus Dever, James Urbaniak, Amy Sloan, Alex Hyde-White, Clark Carmichael, Rae Gray, Liz Pazik, Curtis Edward Jackson, Q’Ira.

There are some invitations that should be returned to the sender with the decline option fully enforceable and expected. For in the rush to entertain the public we allow a multitude of dramas to occupy our time that in all honesty are far from the stocking filler treat that is demanded, the thrill ride and the belief in the intelligence of collective humanity that we frame when presented eagerly to the world of the armchair detective.

Perhaps some films and television adaptations of a tale of intrigue would benefit more by leaving their presence at the foot of the door, that the murder in mind is one framed by outdated tropes and accents, made for places around the world that still thinks that the way we spoke and acted with stiff upper lip in and around World War Two is indicative of the way that television media occasionally fails to realise that society is not the way would have us interpret, but rather a deceit of its own making.

Arguably deceit is the point of a murder mystery, but to be fooled by an ingenious and shrewd plot is not the same as being confronted by a falsehood of narrative, and in that the 2023 release of Invitation To A Murder is one that fails to lift the anticipation of the mood, and instead becomes the worst kind of parody available to the viewer, and falls spectacularly under the scrutiny of reason.

The parody is not of jest, but conviction, and becomes a grating dish served, one that does not fulfil the scent that preceded it being placed on the table of edifying results.

The film attempts to recreate a period of time that in all honesty didn’t exist outside of the imagination of the time, the perceived belief that good manners and an adjusted attitude could carry the day and reveal the wrong doer of the piece. By doing so the film irrevocably becomes stilted, dare it be said, dull.

Murder, and the restoration of order to which all armchair detectives strive in revealing the who and the why, is never dull, but can be found to flounder with the judgement of good intentions, and it should be noted that perhaps those good intentions were honestly drawn, but unfortunately undeliverable.

An invitation returned to sender, not a party to be recommended.

Ian D. Hall