Who Invited Them
Their young son in the care of a friend for the night, Adam and Margo have their friends around for a soirée to show off their new home in the Hollywood hills, cheese, wine, vinyl records which only Adam is allowed to touch on the turntable and the hope that as he tops up the drinks their apparent affluence will impress the right people, while Margo spends most of the evening in the kitchen wishing it were all over.
The wrap-up done, the last guests departing, Margo is shocked to encounter a stranger in the kitchen, Sasha apologising and explaining that she and Tom are neighbours who saw the party in progress and came to introduce themselves. Adam and Tom swiftly bonding while Sasha encourages Margo to relax her inhibitions, as they move deeper into the night the tone changes, the uninvited guests pushing their hosts further in a creepy game of divide and conquer.
Written and directed by Duncan Birmingham, Who Invited Them is an example of single-location filmmaking at its best, Adam and Margo (Veronica Mars’ Ryan Hansen and Extant’s Melissa Tang) socially conditioned to accept the breach in etiquette and open up to Tom and Sasha (13 Reasons Why’s Timothy Granaderos and In the Dark’s Perry Mattfeld) despite being total strangers to them, never questioning what their motivation might be.
Well-dressed, beautiful and successful, Sasha and Tom are charming and engaged, attentive listeners who say all the right things and offer appropriate praise and promises, anticipating precisely what Ryan and Margo want because they are expert observers and master manipulators, egging on their hosts to greater extremes and keeping score while keeping them off-balance with free-flowing drink and drugs.
The single twist signposted from the opening moments – how did Adam get such a good deal on that lovely house in the nice neighbourhood in the first place? – the reveal is less important than the journey to get there, but throughout the doubt remains of the precise relationship of Sasha and Tom to “the history of the house,” whether they are ghoulish fans who seek out crime scenes or if they were somehow directly connected to the incident which keeps the asking price affordable.
An uncomfortable rollercoaster which lurches with every escalation, the script is sharp and the four leads are on point as one couple glares daggers at each other and the other smirks with malicious glee, Who Invited Them a cautionary tale of pampered egos, bruised knuckles and dead hamsters which – unlike the late-staying guests – at an hour and twenty minutes doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Who Invited Them is streaming on Shudder now
