Film Review: The Dinner Party (2020)

The Dinner Party is neither an acquired taste nor a thirst-quencher for those getting goosebumps over the prospect of a gratuitous dining experience among the elite. This sordid serving of mystery and extravagance, from writer / director Miles Doleac (The Hollow), attempts to bring some original spirit to the genre. But in the end (or at least long before that) what is brought to the table might leave you peckish.

But that’s okay. If you have your wits about you then it is not just the food you expect on the menu. Of which there is no grub list – not for what these folk will be eating anyway. Doleac is old enough and smart enough to appreciate that even in the worse case scenario, The Dinner Party gets a bit more of that passionate college kid, wannabe filmmaker out of his system.

The Dinner Party is not a terrible movie. It delivers strokes of familiar horror tropes, and cracks them open for examination. Often through elaborate conversations on the fine arts like classical opera and enormous paintings. Those casually manufactured posters of the film do more than suggest that you know what you’re getting yourself into with this.

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The social gathering at the elegant mansion begins as the young couple fresh for the taking, arrive at the swish location in the middle of nowhere. Jeff (Mike Mayhall) is looking to impress, or at least play ball, so to get some sort of breakthrough funding for his playwright career. His wife Haley (Alli Hart) is seemingly jumping from one madhouse to another as his moral support. And she is hardly his trophy wife. Unless said chunk of scrap brass gets more genuine love and respect from the cold and the damp of the basement it has lodged in since the third grade.

Once inside the massive house – or rather once they’ve knocked on the door and poorly pranked – things slowly trail off into the bizarre. It is the brash Sebastian (Sawandi Wilson) who greets them with overdramatised hostility, before springing a masquerade mask on them.

The head of the ‘posh’ posse is Carmine (Bill Sage), sharpening his knives and being generally snobby about food prep. Carmine and Sebastian may well be domestic partners, but you’d be forgiven for missing that in less than a blink. For when the other semi-ravenous guests are introduced, its difficult to establish who is ‘involved’ with who. Sadie (Lindsay Anne Williams) seems to ooze a sultry sorcery. The darkly perturbed Vincent (director, Miles Doleac) has a crafty aura. And the clearly sexual Agatha (Kamille McCuin) shows up in the nude.

The Dinner Party then proceeds to depict its strange events of the title, via previews of upcoming violence (for the hell of it). Laying it on thick, but laboriously, when Doleac could just as well have given his audience full disclosure of the mayhem ensuing. That the young couple were not to tell anyone of their evening plans is a huge signpost surely.

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Around the table, the group pick Tarot Cards to further insight the characters’ true roles. And have a little game of Whose Parents Are Meanest. In doing so, Haley is given some fleshing out with thankfully-brief flashbacks. Illuminating her somewhat as the focal figure here. Otherwise, the drawn out chats of the arts and awkward atmosphere could have dripped even further into tedious foreshadowing.

By the time Jeff falls weary and blood is drawn, we have long-since realised he is a full-on dickbag husband. Thus, his gruesome demise is a welcome relief rather than a shock. That’s likely not even a spoiler. The shit then really does spatter the fan – and its a welcome, bloody can of worms.

It might be too little too late by then. Especially given that the final moments of the film (which pretend to be a post-title sequence) ought to have been left on the editing room floor. A fade to black just before a certain someone bites into the forbidden fruit would have been a taut, timely closure. Your subconscious trail of movie-watching experience pretty much demands this.

Alas, deception is one of the strongest elements of such a horror film. Perhaps not as much as IMDB billing Jeremy London first in the cast list. Unless a couple of blurry flashback reminders that he can grow facial hair now is all you crave. Doleac also allows the script – co-written by Michael Donovan Horn – to dictate that commenting on not caring about the plot of theatre gives full reign for characters to thus expand on it as part of the daunting ritual.

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What you have to remember with The Dinner Party is that Doleac whisks in the appropriate amount of fun to his execution. He is hardly trying to freshen up the horror or mystery genre. His tongue is in his cheek the whole time. Plus he gets to fulfill his dream to play a debonair, devilish deviant at a murderous dinner party. We can drink to that.

Perhaps a shame, too, that the occult and the mythology are so slightly touched upon and not explored, that we hardly want to call it so. Mercifully, the cinematography has some defining poise, and captures the detail and ambiance of the interiors of manners.

So the overacting, or playing it so down you could find yourself a little drowsy, is all in moderation. And fitting, given the eclectic bunch of adult degenerates on display. And the cast oblige. Sawandi Wilson bites as much of the scenery as he can. Bill Sage might be the most recognisable face here. Though you can catch him business-card-bragging in American Psycho and having his daughters rip shreds off him in We Are What We Are – with arguable more gory and satisfying results.

Alli Hart, as Haley, provides the most assertive transformation then. From the meek, ill-treated wife with Bambi-eyes, to the blood-covered little woman who scampers off like a blood-thirsty fox with her newfound strength and vitality for survival. She’s pretty exhilarating in the film’s final act. Not quite female empowerment, when appears to be more witchcraft than personal growth. But I will certainly have some of what she’s having.