An Awkward Dinner, Demi-gods and the Unquiet Dead

When I go to the theater, I’m rarely there for just a single movie. I spend an inordinate amount of my life in dark rooms, staring at giant screens alongside strangers, all hoping to be transported out of the mundanity of existence. I think ultimately we all want to enter worlds that make us feel less alone or more connected to the universe and its myriad disparate orbits. So when I’m there, I try to fit between two and four movies of completely different genres and quality together to build my own weird little film festival of uncontrollable quality. Besides, if I’m honest with myself, there’s probably nowhere else on earth I feel more at peace than at the cinema.

So, that’s this week’s highest recommendation to you: the next time you go to the movies, try to catch at least two films. Catch three. Be at the theater for so long that the employees look confused by your presence, wondering if you’re a corporate spy. Try to make the movies you see as different as possible so your brain does a minor factory reset as you bounce between films that have no business being watched in the same day, let alone back to back.

My brain was certainly worried about me after the triple feature I pulled off this weekend. With only about five minutes between screenings, I caught “Evil Dead Burn” the live-action “Moana” remake and “The Invite.” What did this bizarre triptych of motion pictures have in common? Only my partially delirious self in the audience, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

I started with “Evil Dead Burn,” a movie I was unreasonably excited for mostly because “Evil Dead” is my favorite horror movie franchise of all time. Did “Burn” live up to that impossible hype? Not remotely, but it’s still a profoundly violent, nasty bit of mean-spirited terror. Director Sébastien Vaniček helmed the delightfully disturbing Deadly Spiders in a French High Rise flick, “Infested,” so I knew he would bring the kinetic insanity that Sam Raimi, Fede Alvarez and Lee Cronin brought to earlier installments. Vaniček delivers bonkers camera movements and inventive ultra violence (seriously, this movie is disgusting), but the film is fundamentally broken by deeply inconsistent performances, a plot that never generates empathy for its characters and multiple lines of unnatural, dull dialogue.

The great Luciane Buchanan carries “Evil Dead Burn” with deeply creepy charisma. Credit: Warner Bros

The story, centered on a French woman who survives a miserable, abusive marriage only to be trapped in an even more dangerous situation with her in-laws, is a decent one. But Vaniček jettisons the bleak, Looney Tunes splatstick humor of the series for a self-serious narrative that is tonally at odds with previous entries. If all you’re after is a few gory set-pieces, you’ll have intermittent fun—just don’t expect to ever want to watch this one again. That said, co-star Luciane Buchanan steals the film with both hands. Whenever she’s not on-screen, nothing interesting is happening. Can she be a movie star now, please?

Next came the live-action “Moana” remake, featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson reprising his role as the demigod Maui—only this time with an inconsistent wig and a prosthetic body suit, sans nipples. Honestly, it’s one of the better live-action Disney remakes, but that’s only when comparing it to outright abominations like “Snow White” and “The Little Mermaid.” In fact, it’s so beholden to the 2016 animated musical that its creative bankruptcy is shocking. “Moana” exists solely to double-dip into the pockets of fans of the original, while trading in the bright neon blues and lush greens of the cartoon for a dull CGI backdrop that, despite shooting on location in Hawaii, looks entirely brought to us from a studio in Burbank.

I wrapped this mini-festival up with “The Invite,” a captivating four-hander starring Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde as a profoundly unhappy married couple hosting a dinner party for their new-ish upstairs neighbors, played by a luminous Penélope Cruz and a never-funnier Edward Norton. Go into this as blindly as possible so you can watch their evening unfold with the same shock and awkwardness as the characters.

Olivia Wilde rediscovers the promise she showed as a filmmaker with her wonderfully warm debut, “Booksmart,” with this blisteringly funny, gorgeously devastating chamber piece that will prompt every couple in the audience to have a complicated conversation on the drive home. “The Invite” is pure cinema that blends deceptively breezy direction, a nuanced script and four flawlessly calibrated performances into a film that not only remixes “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” for a modern audience but also fulfills the ultimate promise of the medium: pinning you to your seat without a single car chase or explosion.

“The Invite” is a modern classic that has more to say about intimacy and humanity in a single monologue from Edward Norton than most films manage in their entire runtime. It was an absolute treat and the perfect palate cleanser to end my marathon.

While I certainly don’t recommend seeing these three specific movies back to back (to back), I still think you should find a random trio and just go for it. Lose yourself for a day, ruin your sleep schedule and risk hating my advice—because a bad day at the movies beats a good day most anywhere else.

“Evil Dead Burn”
Dir. Sébastien Vaniček
Grade: C
Now Playing at Regal Old Mill, Redmond Cinema, Madras Cinema 5

“Moana”
Dir. Thomas Kail
Grade: D+
Now Playing at Regal Old Mill, Sisters Movie House, Redmond Cinema, Madras Cinema 5, 

“The Invite”
Dir. Olivia Wilde
Grade: A
Now Playing at Regal Old Mill, coming

This article appears in the Source July 16, 2026.