'The Invite'

'The Invite'

July 15, 2026 · 20 min

About this episode

Dori and Kpolly discuss Olivia Wilde's film 'The Invite', exploring its unexpected twists and inventive cinematography.

To make a good movie, you can take something expected (your standard romantic comedy, good vs. evil, etc.) and execute it at a high level, or you can take a familiar situation and keep tossing unexpected things at the audience to keep them on their toes. With that second scenario, it’s still necessary — and arguably more difficult — to do it well, which is what Olivia Wilde seems to have pulled off with her third directorial effort, The Invite . The nature of the project almost required Wilde and the cast (including herself) to tap into their crazier creative impulses. The setting is a single location. The centerpiece is a couples dinner party, which most grown-ups will tell you isn’t the place to go mining for high-quality entertainment. That all gets turned on its head pretty quickly, when the dinner-party invitation is reciprocated with a sex-party invitation. As you’ll hear Dori and Kpolly discuss in this episode, the very adventurous offer is only the start of what makes The Invite such a good watch. The tension shifts throughout, as discomfort ventures into curiosity. The single-location setting demands inventive cinematography that bounces shots off mirrors and uses clever…

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Hosts: Dori, Kpolly

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Books & works: The Invite

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