While The Invitation featured plenty of Dracula references, one of the horror romance’s nods to the classic novel makes no sense. While the 2022 release can’t compete with the Twilight saga’s popularity, The Invitation movie still scared up a solid box office reception. However, The Invitation did not fare quite so well with critics.
Despite a spirited central turn from Nathalie Emmanuel, The Invitation’s familiar story failed to surprise reviewers. The Invitation follows Evie, a young artist who arrives at a remote European estate for a family wedding after being reunited with distant relatives via a DNA test kit. During her stay in the palatial home, Evie is swiftly seduced by Lord Walter, the charismatic master of the house who hides a dark secret.
Anyone who recognizes the name of Walter’s estate, "New Carfax Abbey," might be able to guess the nature of that secret before the final reel. Eventually, Walter is revealed to be a vampire (or possibly Bram Stoker’s original Dracula himself, something The Invitation is never entirely clear about). However, long before The Invitation’s big reveal, the preceding scenes are filled with nods to the novel Dracula, some of which are subtle and some of which are surprisingly blatant. Mercifully, the worst of these references is saved until after Walter’s true colors are revealed, although this is hardly enough to excuse The Invitation’s awkward Mina and Jonathan Harker cameo. While Mina and Jonathan were the heroes of Dracula, in The Invitation they are inexplicably turned into his human minions in a twist that manages to be both inexplicable and predictable at the same time.
Why The Invitation’s Mina Harker Cameo Failed
In the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, Mina Harker is the heroine who, alongside Jonathan Harker (and Van Helsing, and a few others), eventually defeats the title character. In The Invitation’s final act, Evie escapes Walter’s castle and is seemingly saved by an elderly couple. However, The Invitation immediately casts suspicion on this couple as they seem too eager to help (and crucially, sedate) Evie. It is extremely obvious that the seemingly sweet old couple is in league with her vampire captor Walter until they introduce themselves as Mina and Jonathan Harker. To a viewer familiar with those names, this seems to imply that the heroes of Dracula are here to help Evie kill the villain, a neat twist after their initial appearance made them seem like obvious villainous henchmen.
However, that doesn’t happen, and instead, it turns out that Mina and Jonathan Harker were just random villagers who were in league with The Invitation’s Dracula stand-in. Why The Invitation’s Ready Or Not-style ending needed a reference to Jonathan and Mina is unclear, but what is truly confusing is The Invitation’s decision to make these characters villains. Whether they are intended to be villainous versions of the original Jonathan and Mina, new characters with the same names or something else entirely is never made clear, and ultimately the last Dracula name-drop in The Invitation ends up more confusing than clever.