The Invitation Movie Review

Spooky Lance Henriksen has a wild experience in the Himalayas and figures he'll bring it back for his friends to experience on his private island.

What's the invitation entail? Poisoning them with some form of proto-LSD and forcing them to admit the sins of their past... which turn out to be pretty heavy indeed (murder, mostly, and lots of it). After they confess, he'll pump them up with the antidote and their minds will be clear, their souls free, etc. etc. Unfortunately, things go a little sour when the hallucinations become all too real, sending more than one of them into fits that include a snake coming out of the pants, bloody women in a bathtub, orgies, and so on.

Wait a sec, isn't this basically the premise of Flatliners?

Alas, there's no Julia Roberts here to keep your attention; Henriksen is the biggest name in the cast and the only one with even passable acting ability. The plot is equally weak: For such a carefully controlled experiment, Henriksen gives his guests an awful wide berth on the island and tends to interact with only one at a time. One of them even attempts to escape by swimming back to the mainland! It's kinda hard to free your mind when you're drowning, ain't it?