A good way to describe A Deadly Invitation would be that it starts as a slow burn and ends in a hurry, with the heat turned on too high because someone was running out of time to finish cooking. The structure of the film definitely needed better planning because, while it wasn’t anything original, it also did not have to be so half-heartedly done. Either way, since we are here, this is a summary and ending of A Deadly Invitation.
Spoiler Alert
How Did The Murder Happen?
How do people with functional daily lives leave everything behind just because someone told them to? But that is the case with people coming together in A Deadly Invitation. Agatha runs a successful podcast where she talks about true crime cases and insists that people focus on the details. Did no one really think of this niche before, and is that why her podcast is so successful? The movie should have established why Agatha was better at investigating than the others for us to believe in her credibility. Either way, she gets an invitation from her sister to come visit her immediately. Agatha hasn’t seen Olivia for five years. They had last met at Olivia’s daughter’s funeral, and they have been low contact since.
Agatha packs her bags and sets off to meet her sister, only to find that she has invited a bunch of other people as well, as she is organizing a game that no one seems to know about or understand. This group consists of people who supposedly love and hate Olivia for a number of reasons, but none of them question why she is wasting their time. It is as if they are all used to her antics, and there is no fighting her. It is only at the end of the film that we realize why they are all so tolerant of her. Right now, the general setup is that Carlos, Olivia’s soon-to-be ex-husband, is paying for the entire thing, and it is a sort of party that signifies a goodbye to Olivia’s current life.
As expected, the group meets Olivia on a yacht, and she instantly makes everyone uncomfortable. She talks about how Sonia has always hated her because Olivia started dating her boyfriend, Carlos, who was also an investor in her perfume line. Then there is Sonia’s boyfriend, Naram, who is there for absolutely no reason. Carlos and Olivia are separating on unfriendly terms, and there is a doctor on board who has a troublesome past with Carlos’ hospitals. Essentially, Olivia says that none of them are there out of love but to keep tabs on the people they are not fond of. It is the ‘keep your friends close but enemies closer’ kind of thinking, and they all will benefit from Olivia’s death. Even Agatha can be considered to be in danger since she is the heir to Olivia’s wealth. Olivia ends the night on this note of high tension and discomfort and retires to her room. A few hours later, she is found on the deck, with her neck broken as she has fallen off of it. Olivia has been killed, and her murderer is on board.
How Is Olivia’s Murder Being Investigated?
Since the death occurred between two territories, some details need to be ironed out as to who will be investigating the case. Until then, all the people on board are asked to stay in the beach house by Officer Jaime Magallon. There is a lieutenant who will be keeping them company.
At the house, things are tense since Carlos is not happy about not being able to notify his workplace about his absence. There is no reception in the area since the cell phone tower blew up right around the time of Olivia’s death. Meanwhile, Agatha discovers that Olivia had been battling depression for the last five years. After her adopted daughter’s death, Olivia had isolated herself from everyone, which was why she and Carlos were getting divorced, in addition to the fact that he had cheated during this time. Carlos also blamed Agatha for not staying in touch with Olivia, not knowing that it was his wife who had pushed away her sister.
In the middle of this fight, there is another incident in the house. Somebody tries to shoot Naram while he is in his room, and that is the second mystery for Agatha to solve. She teams up with the lieutenant to solve the case, and if anybody has seen the Indian film Kahaani, the man will remind you of Satyoki Rana Sinha. They could even be each other’s doppelgangers. Agatha steps out of the house against Magallon’s instructions and makes a few calls to her partner back home, asking her to investigate some names and people so that she can understand what her sister wanted. Evidently, the purpose of Agatha receiving that invitation was for her to investigate the clues that Olivia had dropped during dinner, and the sister is doing her job diligently.
What Did Olivia Want, And Who Killed Her?
The revelation part of A Deadly Invitation arrives quite abruptly, but its salvaging point is that it is the most interesting part of the film. There is a bit of history which is the reason why Olivia did what she did, and Agatha starts with that. She reveals that Naram is actually Ramiro Manuel Godoy, the uncle of Olivia’s adopted daughter, Elisa. His sister, Renata Godoy, had been Elisa’s biological mother. She was a victim of Carlos’ scheme, where he told unsuspecting mothers that their child had passed away, only to give them away to rich couples who were looking for adoptions. Renata had committed suicide when she was told that her daughter had passed away, not knowing that she had been given to Olivia to raise as her own daughter. But when Elisa actually died two years later, her photograph was all over the media, and that is when Ramiro saw her and understood that something was wrong. He needed to approach Olivia to understand what was going on, and Sonia was the key to doing that. Both of them had one common interest, which was to pull down Olivia, and they had teamed up for it. However, Olivia proved to be a far kinder person, and when she realized what had happened with Ramiro and Renata, she promised to bring them justice, and that is what she had been doing for the last few years.
The person who had tried to shoot Ramiro was Ms. Cristina, Carlos’ housekeeper. She had been a crucial part of Carlos’ scheme, and she recognized Naram as Ramiro when she saw him. That is the reason she tried to kill him, and Carlos was well aware of it. One of the reasons Carlos was so desperate to contact the hospital was because an illegal adoption was being planned for the governor and his wife, and he needed to be there for it.
The way Olivia had figured out all this was that she had terminal cancer and was in her last few days. Therefore, justice for children like Elisa and their parents had been her final mission, and she gave her life for that. Agatha guessed that Olivia had killed herself but staged it as a murder so that the investigation would confine the people on the boat to the house. It was on her instructions that Gustavo had blown up the cell tower, leaving Carlos with no means to contact the governor or his staff. Agatha’s job was to get to the bottom of the matter in the time Olivia had bought with her plan, and it had been successful.
During A Deadly Invitation‘s ending, Carlos and Cristina try to run away on the yacht, but since that now belongs to Agatha, she gladly blows it up, ruining their escape. Everyone gets an answer to their involvement in the last game of Olivia, and Ramiro gets justice for his sister. Agatha also figures out that Dr. Figue administered a deadly dose of morphine to Olivia, as per her wishes, to ease her pain in her final moments, right before she made the jump. He was returning the favor that she had done for him many years ago. As for Agatha, she has inherited her sister’s wealth, and she lives happily ever after, solving cases with her partner, Iris.
Final Thoughts
The plot of A Deadly Invitation deserved some better writing. The link between the setup and the big reveal was missing, and that gives it a very half-baked feel. Despite the boring first half, we were ready to sit through till the end, but a lack of proper story development let us down severely. It is still an okay movie, but only if you watch it without any expectations.
