***SPOILERS*** Really deep and heavy stuff here about a number of persons invited to writer/philosopher Roland Levy's, Lance Heriksen, private island for a night. A night that they'll never forget since what Roland planned for them is to relive the most darkest secrets of their lives.Having gone through a series of personal tragedies, one having his pregnant wife get killed in a traffic accident, Roland traveled the world to find out what life is all about and why there's all this suffering in the world. Roland traveled from the wilds of darkest Africa to the dizzying heights of the Himalayas, on the Indian/Napla border, to the steaming jungles of the Amazon and finally, where he found the truth, on a cold and windy slope high up on the Andes. Roland has seen the truth, a truth he want's to share with his closest friends, the truth that finally set him free. Having dinner with his guests Roland had secretly, with the help of his two houseboys Jesus & Manola(Lideo Baldeon & Michael Leisen), spiked the food. As the guests start to hallucinate and go under Roland induces them to "open up" and let it all out about the dark secrets that they kept to themselves and from everyone else including those closest and dearest to them.Whatever Roland had put into the food and drinks it starts to act a lot fasted on his guests then he expected. Before you know it two of them John, David Livingston, and Michael, Douglas O'Keefe, go into cardiac arrest and shock; John with a massive heart attack and Michael after he foolishly tried to swim to safety, and die.Back at the island Michael's wife Liza, Stellina Rusich,cracks up when the truth comes out, due to Roland's revelations, about her involvement with John whom she was very upset with when she found out that he's one of the invited guests; as well as his sleazy and criminal ventures in the stock market. Joel, Christopher Shyer, who at first thought that this whole party was some kind of joke on Roland's part starts to lose his eyesight and goes into a paranoiac fit, As the ghost of his father takes over Joel's mind and starts to remind him of how he treated him in the last hours of his life. Both Joel's wife Maria, Sarah-Jane Redmound, and Anne, Stefanie Von Phetter, start to see vision of Anne's sister who killed herself and whom they, in their minds, were accountable for her death. Joel with the help of Roland gets back to normal but is shocked to find that everyone on the island, minus Roland and the busboys, are dead and ready to be buried including his wife Maria! Angered at what Roland put him, his publisher, through as well as having his wife and friends die in this crazy game that he concocted Joel has just about had it and is about to blow his brains out, with an antique gun from Roland's gun collection, that it's then that the truth is finally revealed to him! It changes his life and what he thought was his sense of reality forever! Yes Joel finds out to his great relief that his father, whom he feared and hated, was not really the man that he thought that he was and forgave Joel for all the bad things that he did, or thought that he did, to him in the last days of his life.

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

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.

"The Invitation" is a B-flick from the get go. Telling a silly story about a man (Henriksen) who invites a bunch of friends to his island home only to poison them and hold back the antidote so they'll have some kind of near death experience or life altering epiphany or whatever, "The Invitation" starts off like a B-flick, ends like a B-flick, and everything in between is claptrap B-flick drama with poor performances, an awful story, psychodramatic overtones which don't work, a hidden agenda ploy which is utterly ridiculous, and huge plot holes which aren't even spackled up with titilators. Watch for this one on broadcast....so you can miss it. (D+)