In “Who Invited Them”, the latest Shudder original, writer-director Duncan Birmingham uses the tropes of the home-invasion genre into a palpably tense thriller. For this, Birmingham goes to the Hitchcockian way of creating suspense, with just about a touch of mystery. The result is a tantalizingly apprehensive watch without resorting to a bloodbath that is generally associated with films of the same genre. Conversations and manipulations channel the intended dread, rather than chainsaws and jackhammers.
Who Invited Them Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Adam (Ryan Hansen) and Margo (Melissa Tang) seemed to be the couple who has everything. Their newly bought villa, in the posh suburbs of Hollywood Hills, was the latest addition to their wealth of happiness. Or so it seemed at first. Their housewarming party reeked their newfound elite status. Adam particularly wanted to impress his office colleagues and his boss with the glitz that their new house catered to. Margo was not too thrilled about that though.
As guests started to filter out and eventually Adam and Margo were finally alone, they wonder about a smartly dressed young couple they saw at the party. Both of them had thought the other invited the couple, but none of them actually did. Just when they were thinking their party was gate-crashed, the subjects of their conversation showed up. That couple, Tom (Timothy Granaderos) and Sasha (Perry Mattfeld) still had not left.
The constant booze and occasional cocaine, both proposed by Tom and Sasha, loosened Adam and Margo quite a bit. When the men went to have a tour of the house, Sasha started to play with Margo’s mind. She encouraged Margo to reminisce about her old bandmate and call that guy in the middle of the night after Margo told her that Adam used to be quite jealous of that guy. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the ladies, Tom offered Sasha to Adam as part of a ‘welcome gift’, in a supposed ménage-a-trois.
Who Invited Them Movie Review:
From the very first scene, Birmingham establishes what is at stake. The lives of the host of the house. That creates the suspense. From the moment Tom and Sasha appear on the screen, and the fact that they are the ‘Them’ of the title of the film, it becomes transparent what the invading couple is up to. Birmingham’s script adeptly traverses through various events and conversations that propel the tension to raise higher and higher. Slowly but steadily.
Timothy Granaderos and Perry Mattfeld are terrific together. Early in the film, the couple has been referred to as the ‘Stylish funeral couple’. The couple is impressive and easy on the eye to the older hosts, Adam and Margo. There is a charm in them that would make other couples want to be ‘couple-friends’ with them. Granaderos is the smooth-talking, persuasive one while Mattfeld goes for the wild, uninhibited persona. Both of them always manage to tantalize with their collective hint of being unhinged.
The only gripe would be the undercooked subplot featuring Adam and Margo’s friend, Teeny, in her night journey. Apart from playing a minor role in the climax, that subplot serves the purpose of minute extension only.
Who Invited Them Movie, Ending Explained:
Who are Tom and Shasha?
Even after Tom and Sasha’s perpetual efforts, both individually and combined, Adam and Margo got to the breaking point but did not break. On the contrary, they started to become wary of Tom and Sasha and asked them to leave. Politely at first, but rudely once politeness seemed to bounce off the guests. After quite a melee, Tom and Sasha agreed to leave. Adam and Margo made a point to observe whether they actually get inside the house opposite Adam and Margo’s house. Seeing Tom and Sasha entering the house, they relented.
However, Adam noticed a pair of earrings Sasha had left and took the earrings to the opposite house. Only then did he hear whimpering sounds coming from inside the house. Tom, seeing Adam, pulled him inside the house and physically overpowered him. Adam got tied up and shut. Tom and Sasha introduced the actual owners of that neighboring house, an older couple. Both tied up on chairs.
Tom and Sasha revealed themselves to be the twin brother and sisters of the story Adam had mentioned before. About the murders that had happened in his new house. The couple of that story, Tom and Sasha’s parents, did not kill each other. They were killed by their twin children. The parents were abusive to each other and to Tom and Sasha. This made the twins start a game of manipulating their parents into hurting each other. And one day, the children finished their game by taking the knife to their parents. The older couple, tied up in front of Adam, had known about Tom and Sasha’s parents’ abusive behaviors towards their children. But they had ignored.
Why Tom and Sasha chose not to kill Adam and Margo?
The marauding twins had plenty of opportunities to kill the sloshed and coked hosting couple, the object of their experimentation. However, they did not. Tom said that he liked them. This was perhaps true. Sasha had been shown to eavesdrop on the final conversation before Adam and Margo asked them to leave. In that conversation, Adam and Margo apologized to each other. Tom and Sasha go house to house to see which married couple are like their parents. It is presumed that if the experimented couple could not pass Tom and Sasha’s tests, they die. Adam and Margo passed the test.
What happened to Tom and Sasha?
After killing the older couple, Tom and Sasha left the house. And left Adam alive. Adam freed himself and started to run. Meanwhile, Teeny finally completed her journey and reached the location where she stumbled on Tom and Sasha. Tom stabbed her with a screwdriver, not fatally. The shocked and injured Teeny pulled her rifle from the car and tried to aim for the departing Tom and Sasha. However, in the confusion, she shot Adam, who was running away from the scene of the murders.
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