Closed box movies are my jam. Granted, generally they are more mindjobby than hilarious. More mind-fucks than intense life dramas. But still, I love a fantastically scripted closed box flick. Take for example the movie The Humans. That is 100% in this same veing… well, until it isn’t of course. Or 10×10, or Hippopotamus? Or or or or… Faults anyone? Hell! Or Tape?!? Or for the love of all that is good and holy?? Sanctuary? Huh? What about Sanctuary? Or better yet, or not better, but more apropos… what about The Invite movie’s perfect drama cousin… Beatriz at Dinner?? Movies that rely heavily on brilliant screenplays, and brilliant
Regardless… (pardon me, and sorry for the hyperventilation. I’m done breathing into a bag… I’m good now.) generally speaking, my beat is puzzle boxes, psychological thrillers, the stuff that makes you rewind and go “wait, what?” The Invite isn’t that kind of movie. There’s no twist, no unreliable narrator, no third-act reveal that recontextualizes everything you just watched. And yet I can’t stop thinking about it, which is exactly the reaction I usually reserve for the genre I actually write about. So here we are.
The Invite is actually a movie that came from a movie adaption… seven of them actually. And a play before that. I knew that going into this movie… and I found myself saying at the end of this film – YOU ARE GOING TO WATCH EVERY SINGLE ADAPTATION OF THIS PLAY THAT EXISTS. THIS IS A FACT. So apparently, this will be a project of mine for the next month I guess? Regardless, that is a post for another day. Right now, we are here to talk about this Olivia Wilde adaptation
Full spoilers below, including the ending. You’ve been warned.
The Invite Movie setup
Joe (Seth Rogen, who is taking Hollywood by storm with The Studio, and Platonic, etc. which I both highly enjoyed) is a failed musician coming home from a job he resents to a marriage that’s mostly held together by resentment and habit. His wife Angela (Olivia Wilde, who also directs) has invited the upstairs neighbors — Piña (Penélope Cruz – Don’t Worry Darling, Booksmart, Her, etc etc.), a divorced sexologist, and Hawk (Edward Norton – The Illusionist, Fight Club, etc.), a widower — over for dinner. Joe and Angela have spent the last several nights lying awake listening to their neighbors have very loud sex, and Joe’s plan for the evening is to finally say something about it. Angela’s plan is for Joe to shut up and be normal for one night so she can make a friend.
That’s the whole movie, structurally. One apartment, one evening, four people. It’s a chamber piece in the most literal sense, and it lives or dies on whether the tension in the room ever gets boring. Spoiler alert – It really doesn’t.
The Invite Movie – The turn
The awkward-dinner-party stuff — Angela forgetting to check dietary restrictions, no wine in the house, Joe needling the neighbors while somehow winning them over with his bluntness — is the table-setting. The movie actually starts once Piña and Hawk apologize for the noise and explain themselves: they’re not just a loud couple, they’re non-monogamous, and part of what Joe and Angela have been hearing is group sex. Piña admits flat out that she and Hawk came downstairs hoping to invite their neighbors into that world.
Joe and Angela are into it. Piña, notably, is not — not because she’s judgmental, but because she’s a professional, and professionals read a room. She’s watched this couple fight all night and she doesn’t think an orgy is going to fix whatever’s actually broken. So instead of a foursome, you get a partner swap that immediately goes sideways: Angela freezes up with Hawk, and Joe throws his back out dancing with Piña. It’s a very funny bit of slapstick that’s also pointing out the massive architectural flaws in both of these people — the movie keeps setting up the “sexy” version of this story and then redirecting the energy into something more diagnostic.
That redirection is the whole movie. Piña isn’t there to seduce anyone. She’s there to make Joe and Angela actually talk to each other, and once she gets them alone, she does — pulling out a year of resentment, a year without sex, and the quiet admission that they’ve been staying together mostly for their daughter, Maggie. Piña’s suggestion isn’t “stay together” or “have more group sex.” It’s “maybe you should just admit that this relationship is over.” And Joe and Angela, for the first time all night, actually agree on something.
The Invite Movie – That ending, and why it works
Here’s the part I want to think about a little bit, because it’s the choice that elevates this from “pretty good dinner-party comedy” to something I think people are going to be talking about at the end of the year. Joe and Angela go into the kitchen to figure out what happens next. When they come back, Piña and Hawk are just… gone. No goodbye, no last piece of wisdom, no scene where the wise outsiders get their own moment of closure. They poof, vanished.
And then the movie ends on almost nothing. Joe and Angela agree to sleep in separate rooms. Joe goes back to his office… and his piano. Which, by the way, is an instrument he he hasn’t touched in years… and starts playing. Angela comes in joins him in playing… it’s obviously a shared experience together… this song. And as Joe continues playing, she rests her head on his shoulder. No dialogue. No resolution about whether they’re staying together or splitting up. Just two people who’ve been screaming past each other all night, suddenly quiet in the same room.
I’ve read some pushback on this ending — a few reviews called it a retreat into safety after a movie that spent 90 minutes promising something more audacious. I get the complaint, but I think it misreads what the silence is doing. This isn’t a couple getting back together. It’s a couple who just admitted, out loud, to a stranger and to each other, that their marriage might be over — and the piano isn’t a reconciliation, it’s the first honest thing either of them has done all night that isn’t a weapon. Whether they stay married or not is almost beside the point. The movie’s actual question was never “will they stay together,” it was “can these two people stop performing for each other long enough to be honest,” and the ending answers that with a yes, even if it’s a yes with no words attached.
Piña, and the trap the movie doesn’t fall into
I want to specifically call out what this movie does with Cruz’s character, because it’s the thing I’d have bet against going in. “Seductive European neighbor upends a boring marriage” is a premise that’s been botched a hundred times — it’s one bad script decision away from being a fantasy with an accent. The Invite sidesteps that almost entirely by making Piña the one adult in the room. She’s magnetic not because she’s dangling sex in front of anyone, but because she’s the only character who isn’t performing — she says what she thinks, she doesn’t need to be the loudest person in the room, and she’s read Joe and Angela’s marriage more accurately in one evening than they’ve managed in years. Cruz plays her with a kind of restless physicality — she’s always touching something, interacting with the space — that makes her feel like the only genuinely alive person at the table. It’s a smart inversion of a lazy archetype, and it’s the reason the movie’s morality never feels like it’s rooting for infidelity. It’s rooting for honesty, and the swap plot is just the mechanism that gets everyone there.
Norton’s Hawk is the weaker of the two neighbor roles on paper — the story doesn’t give him nearly as much to do as Piña — but there’s a monologue late in the film about why he goes by “Hawk” instead of his given name that lands harder than it has any right to, mostly on the strength of Norton just committing to it completely. And I know from reading interviews, Olvia Wilde… not just the lead in this film, but also the Director, allowed Norton to bring that story in sight unseen and perform it in front of her, on camera. Live. Come on! It’s those kind of movie moments that make magic happen. Wilde’s tears are real. It’s a glorious moment. I loved every second of it.
The Invite Movie – Where this sits for me
I’ll say the quiet part loud: I think this is the best comedy of the year, and I think it’s a legitimate Best Picture contender — not a guaranteed nominee, the field’s too crowded and this is too small and talky a movie for some voters, but a real one. The Cruz-for-Supporting-Actress conversation that’s already started feels correct to me; I’d be surprised if she’s not in the mix by the time nominations land. Wilde’s direction is the thing that impressed me most, honestly — three features in, and this is the first time the “visual stylist” reputation she picked up from Booksmart and Don’t Worry Darling feels fully in service of the story instead of announcing itself. The blocking in that apartment is fantastic beginning to end — who’s framed with whom, who’s separated by a doorway, who’s reflected in glass instead of seen directly — and it never once feels like a film school exercise. It feels like careful people who thought hard about a small space and used every inch of it.
It’s not a flawless movie. The first act runs a little hot — there’s a stretch early on where the score (all cello, surprisingly aggressive for a comedy) is fighting the dialogue for attention instead of supporting it, and it took me a scene or two to adjust to the register. But once the movie actually gets going, I didn’t want it to end, and the ending it landed on is the rare choice that gets better the more I think about it instead of worse.
Go see this one again with all the people you can and argue about your own relationships afterward. I mean, that is basically the design spec of the movie after all.
Now To My Invite Movie Homework That I Promised To Do
So, let’s start over. Walk through a few details all over again. As I mentioned at the top – The Invite is this 2026 American film directed by Olivia Wilde – this movie… right? It originally came from a screenplay for a film by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones. That original screenplay came from an English-language remake of the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs by Cesc Gay. Okay? That film (which is entitled Sentimental) is actually based on Cesc Gay’s play that is entitled Los vecinos de arriba or, The Upstairs Neighbors. There is also an Italian version of Gay’s original screenplay (entitled Neighbors), a Swiss film version of Gay’s original screenplay (entitled The Neighbors from Upstairs), a French version (entitled Maybe More, or Et plus si affinitiés), and the 2024 South Korean version is entitled The People Upstairs (윗집 사람들) and it all culminates with this most recent American edition. I’m sorry, but you just don’t get a half dozen remakes, easily, if you have a meh script. This script just sings gloriously.
And guess what? I’ve already started on my homework, by finding, renting, and hitting play on Sentimental… I’ve stopped it, 30 seconds in, while two men are carrying a rolled up rug I recognize from this film. I’ve stopped it to finish this write up. But as soon as I hit publish, I’m heading back to that film because I just can’t get enough of this screenplay and can’t wait to see what the other various incarnations look and feel like. And then after that one, the French version, and after that? Maybe we’ll do the Korean verision. Who knows, maybe the Swiss version. But I promise to make good on watching every edition of this film that I can get my hands on. And if that doesn’t tell you how good this screenplay is, I don’t know what will.
