The Invisible Man

In a time period where movies franchises have been desperately trying to force themselves into a connected universe to match the success of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), the one that arguably did it the weakest and was the quickest to fail at was ironically the franchise that started the trend to begin with, The Universal Monsters. Despite being the originators of the concept for connecting movies and characters during their original run of movies in the 1930s, the attempt at making a ‘’Dark Universe’’ in the current era was immediately halted when the 2017 film, The Mummy starring Tom Cruise was largely hated by critics and audiences alike, stopping any chances of making any more movies and putting several projects on hold like The Bride of Franchise with Angelina Jolie, The Wolfman with Dwayne Johnson, and even Van Helsing with Channing Tatum . A lot of these projects were thankfully either scrapped entirely or re-entered development around 2019, but with more of a ‘’single-movie each’’ idea in mind for each, with the 2020 film, The Invisible Man, starting off this fresh slate and replacing what would’ve been a movie starring Johnny Depp, and the results were probably a lot better than what we could’ve gotten. After escaping the grasp of her heavily controlling boyfriend, Adrian Griffin (played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen), Cecilia Kass (played by Elizabeth Moss) is still feeling his presence around her even after she is told that he has apparently committed suicide. Knowing he would never do that and that he was working on technology that worked on visual deception, she is under the impression that he is still alive and stalking her with an invisibility suit. While everyone around her, including her childhood friend and supporter, James Lanier (played by Aldis Hodge) and her sister, Emily (played by Harriet Dyer) thinks she’s crazy and it seems like he’s destroying her life around her in a physical and emotional sense, Cecilia has to find a way to reveal him before he truly commands power over her once again. Having practically nothing to do with the original H.G. Wells sci-fi novel created in 1897 outside of the titular character, the Invisible Man takes this pretty outdated concept which had already been explored in past movie versions (with limiting results) and uses it in a mostly effective way that twists the formula in such a simple way, but the results are pretty great. The movie has its own share of faults that keep it from being as good as it could’ve been, but its easy to say that after the travesty that came from the first film in this Dark Universe, this was a breath of fresh air.

The Invisible Man has had a lot of film versions over the years, with many taking the original concept or taking the idea in slightly different way, which had its own pros and cons to it. The idea for a newer Invisible Man movie was in works as early back as 2006 until it was finally picked up, than dropped again when the Universal’s shared cinematic universe tried and failed to get taken off. Out of all the versions, this version not only decided to focus the attention on the visible person (using the unseen predator as the obscure stalker), but it also works its way into a brilliant allegory for mental manipulation in relationships and the psychological traumas that come with rough break-ups, especially when said abusive significant other is known for controlling their victim in a way that will leave scars in more than just a physical sense. In that regard, this movie works with a brilliant premise that gives this seemingly silly monster a new level of realistic fear. It’s an appropriately slow-paced movie, so the set-up for scares are extra long and the progression from subtle problems to massive assaults is a lot slower as well, providing a different mood than the usual quick-pace, overblown mentality that would’ve followed several of the other Invisible Man movies. Usually that would be a problem especially with the plot set-up being pretty generic and uninteresting, but it feels like it was mapped out beforehand to really utilize this stalker set-up to bring a whole new dimension to this monster. The directing by Leigh Whannell (who worked as a writer on several horror films like Saw, Dead Silence and Insidious, before evolving to direct movies like Insidious: Chapter 3, and Upgrade) is very effective at changing the mood of this familiar idea and grounding it in a believable manner in spite of the obvious stretches in reality, but it does lose that element the more it keeps going.   While incredibly strong on the premise basis, the actual plot (also written by Whannell) is not only as already mentioned incredibly predictable and even kind of lazy, its also strangely overly complicated and loses a lot of its footing around the last act. What could have been an amazing dissection of mental illness if it were never confirmed whether the monster was real or just in her paranoid mind, the more the monster is shown, the more ‘’comic-booky’’ the movie becomes and the less interesting it becomes (which probably comes from having more casual horror producer, Jason Blum, attached to this movie). Given Whannell’s past horror escapades being more popcorn entertainment than genuine gripping horror, it explains how in spite of some qualities, the movie isn’t able to evolve beyond a fairly mainstream level and blocks the complexity of this idea for something much more traditional. That mixed with a pretty anticlimactic ending, a fake-out that feels incredibly pointless and only used to drag things out, and a narrative that seems pretty basic in an era where horror movies have stepped up the boundaries in how to tell a story through horror, it does lose a good chunk of its goodwill sadly. It was in the right direction, but just fell apart at the end.

The acting is allowed to be incredibly charming in the lighter moments and incredibly panicked and crazed in the serious moments. Nowadays horror does a much better job at finding the correct blend of light and dark elements to make the movie feel believable, but also not lifeless and dull. Most of the acting, and by extension the actors themselves, feel like they want to be a part of this story and despite having pretty basic layouts whether they be big or small roles, they want to give it their all, so almost everybody does their best to give a solid performance and it mostly pays off. Elizabeth Moss is especially good in the lead; being able to play frantic and panicked, but also slightly crazed very well. She’s proven before that she can play these kind of mentally crazed roles very well, but this would be one of the first mainstream films she’s been able to lead, and she does fit into the space pretty nicely. She truly does look and sound like a mad woman, and when she says these things, its delivered in such a way that even though the audience is keenly aware (at least from a cinematic level) that it is more than likely true, you buy why others wouldn’t believe her. Most of the side characters like Aldis Hodge, Harriet Dyer and Storm Reid as James’ daughter are appropriately charming and most of the evil people like  Michael Dorman as the villain’s brother are pretty obviously bad from face value, but do their best to hide it from the beginning. Weirdly one of the more complicated elements of the film is the Invisible Man himself, who doesn’t really get a chance to have much of an identity (due to being off-screen for most of the time) and while isn’t really that interesting even from the beginning, he is ironically much better when he’s not even allowed to be a character, rather just a faceless threat. While what he represents is actually more terrifying than what he becomes, the visual lay-out of his plan throughout the movie is actually pretty well done, and most of the silent moments of him stalking her are pretty effective earlier on. Even with this in mind though, this starts becoming irrelevant when he does get a name and a character, and ironically becomes less interesting, and the more he is shown, he becomes a little too Hollywood to feel like a realistic threat (even his suit feels like something out of a Marvel movie)

It feels like the more appropriate term to throw around for this movie is that its incredibly tense as opposed to incredibly scary. There really aren’t any moments in this movie that genuinely feel spine-tingling, but most of the set-up is based around this slow reveal that could come at any second or not at all. In terms of build-up, the movie very cleverly uses its other elements to keep the audience on its edge; like setting up certain shots that look like people could be watching them, or the music being mostly quiet in these moments so as to never build-up to a specific ‘’boo’’ moment that would cut off the tension. The cinematography by Stefan Duscio and the musical score by Benjamin Wallfisch is well handled in this regard, but the understated nature of these elements does mean its hard to fully remember them outside of these moments. The production design by Alex Holmes and Diana Lanagan does have a steely, cold quality to it that mixed with the often dirty lighting and mostly naturalistic sets does sometimes add to the mood, but aside of the villain’s house which is more openly distinct, its also nothing that noticeable. The movie probably could have benefited from utilizing the uncertainty of whether or not there was actually an invisible man or if this were just a paranoid delusion that she created after a traumatic event, but at the same time, the movie is literally called the Invisible Man and since there are plans for more movies on the way, it probably had to have him in their in some capacity. While not having the movie from his point of view is a nice change of pace, the actual suit and design of the invisibility suit actually looks pretty bad and isn’t helped by the effects not being that good either, but it thankfully (and fittingly) isn’t seen that much.

This movie could have turned out a lot worse considering the last movie based around a Universal monster literally tanked a multitude of projects just after its one failure. Overall, despite what faults it has, The Invisible Man proved that a movie like this could work in the modern era with a new coat of paint and will hopefully bring light to newer movies based around the infamous monsters later on. The movie did break some new boundaries with tackling this idea, but it can’t be ignored that maybe a few more things should have been done to really make this movie work. Some of the characters could have been a bit more interesting, the story could have been a bit more unpredictable and not just ridden along with the fantastic real-life parallel, and if you were going to actual show the Invisible Man, don’t make him look like a discount Spider-man. However, there’s still some engaged performances and great moments of suspense that make it still worth checking out regardless of its rougher patches. Showing that a stalker doesn’t need to be around you to be harmful, see for yourself if the Invisible Man is something that you want to look into.