The Invitation (2003)

A philosophical movie that seems to lumber. It does have its moments and is worth your time if you have it to spare. Lance Henriksen plays Roland Levy, a prominent horror writer that resides on a remote wooded island. He has just returned from a globe-trotting adventure and thinks he has discovered a soul-cleansing tactic while in the Andes. Levy invites six friends for dinner and some conversation that turns heavy and dark. He tells of how Andes locals poisoned him and brought him back to life. He wants to share this experience with his friends. At dinner they are unexpectedly poisoned. The antidote...a truthful amendment of their lives. The cast also includes: Stephanie von Pfetten, Christopher Shyer, Sarah-Jane Redmond, Stellina Ruisch, David Livingstone and Doug O'Keeffe.

The cover suggests a horror or thriller, but instead, WOW, it was an awesome, quite deep, philosophical and sweet movie. Roland wanted to share his 'gift' with his friends and boy did he! Hats off to the quiet intensity of Lance playing Roland, who just wanted to impart a very rare and profound gift to those he loved.Some of the lines he spoke in the movie, along with the beautiful scenery and music that accompanied it...will leave you feeling strangely serene and peaceful by the end of it.Give it a chance. The story is a bit weak, not really explaining and resolving everything, but all in all, it's a must-see for lovers of deeper, profound type movies.Also recommended: What Dreams May Come, The 5 People You Meet in Heaven, What the Bleep Do We Know, Waking Life.Shipper

I was going through the Starz! schedule looking for good movies to see and I saw this movie and I thought the name sounded familiar so I came to this site to check it out and it was a movie I had seen last year on the same channel. I thought it was just amazing.Here this man (Lance Henriksen as Roland) has been running from something that he feels he cannot escape. *I remember a scene where he is on a cliff,I think he wanted to die.* Then some people found him and he was given this liquid and told that it was poison and the only way to get the cure was to tell them his deepest darkest secret. After that his life changed dramatically, he was a free man with no regrets.So Roland invites his friends over to his home and at dinner he tells them of his experience and then tells them he put that liquid in their food or drink. He does this because he wants to give them a chance to be free, he does this out of love. It's a messed up thing to do but I understand why he did it. And he helps each one of them to get past their pain, or their guilt and regrets.It's a wonderful movie I hope you watch it and feel the same way too.

The Invitation is about a guy who invites 6 people to his house and makes them confess their worst secrets in order to live. They have no way of leaving the island or escaping. He poisons them and if they don't tell the truth, they won't get the anecdote and they will die. He does this because the same thing happened to him when he went to another country. People start getting sick and don't know what it going on until he tells them they must reveal their worst secrets or else they will die. This movie sounded pretty good from the cover when I went to rent it, but was one of the worst movies I've ever seen and I've seen some pretty bad movies. Everything that happens is so random and way out there. The idea of the movie was pretty good, but everything was really confusing and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The people who made this movie must have been crazy and I don't know how anyone would be able to understand it.