Dir: Olivia Wilde | US Comedy Satire 2026
Olivia Wilde’s The Invite is about a dinner part from Hell. It starts with a perfectly chilled cocktail that turns out to be spiked with an emotional truth serum. Those imbibing are Wilde herself, Edward Norton, Seth Rogan and Penelope Cruz.
A razor-sharp relationship comedy is wrapped in the trappings of a sex farce, Wilde’s third feature transforms a single dinner party into a battlefield of marital resentments, sexual anxieties, and brutally honest self-discovery. The result is an entertaining crowd-pleaser: sophisticated, hilarious, and just uncomfortable enough make the audience squirm.
Adapted from the Spanish film The People Upstairs, The Invite centre on Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde), a married couple whose relationship has quietly calcified into mutual frustration. Joe, a cynical music teacher drifting through life on autopilot, returns home to discover that Angela has invited their enigmatic upstairs neighbours over for dinner. Angela, tightly wound and desperate to maintain the illusion that everything is rosy, sees the evening as a social obligation. Joe sees it as a disaster waiting to happen.
Pina (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), arrive carrying the film’s disruptive energy. Pina, an exuberantly candid sexologist, has little patience for social niceties and even less for emotional dishonesty. Hawk, her calm, self-assured husband, projects the kind of effortless confidence that instantly destabilises Joe. Together they embody a version of romantic openness that fascinates and terrifies their hosts.
The genius of The Invite lies in how these four personalities lock together. Joe’s defensive sarcasm ricochets against Pina’s radical honesty. Angela’s insecurity flares in the presence of Hawk’s emotional composure. Pina and Hawk appear to be the “evolved” couple, while Joe and Angela are trapped in patterns of resentment and avoidance. Yet as the evening unfolds, Wilde wisely refuses to reduce anyone to a simple archetype. Every character becomes both accuser and accused, victim and provocateur. The shifting alliances and power dynamics generate a deliciously unpredictable rhythm, with conversations escalating from awkward small talk to existential combat in a matter of minutes.
Performance-wise, the foursome operates as a chamber piece. Rogen gives his best performance in years, mining Joe’s insecurity without sacrificing his character’s comic edge. Wilde gives Angela a prickly vulnerability that deepens as the film progresses. Cruz is magnetic, stealing scenes through sheer force of conviction, while Norton weaponises understatement, turning Hawk into the film’s most quietly devastating presence.
As a filmmaker, Wilde demonstrates remarkable confidence in restraint. Working largely within a single apartment and relying on only four principal actors, she embraces the mechanics of a theatrical chamber piece that never feels stagey. The camera prowls through rooms searching for emotional fault lines, finding visual tension in glances, silences, and shifting body language. Shot on film and paced with mounting precision, The Invite feels simultaneously intimate and explosive, as though the walls themselves are closing in on the characters.
The screenplay, by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, crackles with weaponized wit. The dialogue recalls classic marital combat comedies while remaining distinctly contemporary in its exploration of monogamy, intimacy, and modern relationship expectations. Every joke lands with a sting attached.
Most impressively, The Invite understands that the funniest conversations about sex are rarely about sex at all. They’re about power, insecurity, loneliness, longing, and the stories couples tell themselves to survive. Wilde turns those anxieties into comic fuel without ever losing sight of the underlying sadness.
By the time the dinner plates are cleared and the emotional wreckage surveyed, The Invite has evolved into something richer than a simple comedy of manners. It’s a sharply observed portrait of people confronting the gap between the relationships they have and the relationships they imagined they would have. One dinner. Four people. Countless emotional casualties.
IN UK CINEMAS FROM 3 JULY