The Invisible Man | Little White Lies

The Invis­i­ble Man

26 Feb 2020 / Released: 28 Feb 2020

A woman's profile view with hand-print on the wall beside her face.
A woman's profile view with hand-print on the wall beside her face.
3

Anticipation.

Remember the Dark Universe? Lol.

4

Enjoyment.

An atmospheric, expertly-crafted twist on the source material. The optics are very good.

3

In Retrospect.

The cracks appear if you think about it too much, but spooky all the same.

HG Well’s clas­sic sci-fi hor­ror is giv­en a sat­is­fy­ing mod­ern twist cour­tesy of Blum­house and direc­tor Leigh Whannell.

After the suc­cess of his enjoy­ably schlocky 2018 body hor­ror, Upgrade, it seemed inevitable that Leigh Whan­nell would be hand­ed the keys to a tent­pole stu­dio movie. Well, that’s proven to be half accu­rate. Pre­sum­ably impressed by his eye for a slick, unnerv­ing set-piece, Uni­ver­sal enlist­ed the direc­tor for their much-dis­cussed (and delayed) remake/​reimagining of The Invis­i­ble Man. But with a bud­get of just $7 mil­lion, this is a rel­a­tive­ly small pro­duc­tion by Hol­ly­wood standards.

This is the Blum­house way; a tried-and-trust­ed for­mu­la that pro­duces a stag­ger­ing num­ber of hor­ror flicks each year for very lit­tle out­lay, all of which go on to make a tidy sum at the box office. Some are great, some are good, some are absolute­ly dia­bol­i­cal, but they all make mon­ey. For­tu­nate­ly for Whan­nell, he’s made the best case sce­nario ver­sion: an effec­tive, expert­ly-craft­ed hor­ror that will in all like­li­hood see a hand­some return on Uni­ver­sal and Blumhouse’s investment.

The very notion of a ‘#MeToo-era mon­ster movie’, as this film has repeat­ed­ly been billed, is enough to bring on a case of hives, reduc­ing a glob­al move­ment against sys­tem­at­ic sex­u­al abuse to mass enter­tain­ment pop­corn fod­der. Hor­ror cin­e­ma has always been well-equipped to deal with women’s trau­ma; there’s a rich (if com­pli­cat­ed) his­to­ry of rape-revenge films and aveng­ing angel pro­tag­o­nists seek­ing per­son­al ret­ri­bu­tion when the sys­tem fails them.

In The Invis­i­ble Man, Elis­a­beth Moss game­ly takes on the man­tle of the wronged woman. In the dead of night, her Cecelia Kass flees the iso­lat­ed mod­ernist com­pound she shares with her tech entre­pre­neur boyfriend Adrien (Oliv­er Jack­son-Cohen), hav­ing endured months of abuse not even her sis­ter Emi­ly (Har­ri­et Dyer) knew of. After sev­er­al weeks spent in hid­ing at the home of her cop friend James (Ald­is Hodge) and his teenage daugh­ter Syd­ney (Storm Reid), Cecelia receives news that her ex has killed him­self. But as strange events begin to unfold around her, Cecelia can’t shake the feel­ing Adrien might not be dead after all.

A woman's profile view with hand-print on the wall beside her face.

Cecelia’s con­cerns are rou­tine­ly dis­missed as a side-effect of her trau­ma, and her reluc­tance to speak about her expe­ri­ence means that oth­ers have a hard time under­stand­ing and empathis­ing with her. The film draws obvi­ous par­al­lels between the day-to-day impor­tance of believ­ing vic­tims of abuse and Cecelia’s height­ened night­mare, but while HG Wells’ source nov­el (first adapt­ed in 1933 by James Whale) con­cerns a mad sci­en­tist who exper­i­ments with dif­fer­ent chem­i­cals and for­mu­las, Whan­nell grounds his sto­ry firm­ly in the here and now. It’s a smart update: tech­nol­o­gy, from smart­phones to home secu­ri­ty sys­tems, is rou­tine­ly utilised by abu­sive indi­vid­u­als to con­trol their partners.

There are plen­ty of neat tech­ni­cal flour­ish­es, too. Block­ing emp­ty spaces as if there’s an actor present means we’re always in Cecelia’s shoes, while the use of low-fre­quen­cy sounds and a sparse score plays tricks on our ears. Acts of vio­lence are sparse and there­fore all the more shock­ing when they occur. Moss is elec­tric in the lead role, at once vul­ner­a­ble and hys­ter­i­cal yet still capa­ble of dis­play­ing a men­tal for­ti­tude and resilience that means she should nev­er be under­es­ti­mat­ed. The fight scenes are par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive: it can’t be easy to con­vey pal­pa­ble ter­ror while essen­tial­ly punch­ing thin air.

After the cred­its roll and the shock wears off, so the plot starts to fall apart. Still, this is an inven­tive spin on a clas­sic tale of male sociopa­thy and female revenge, with a bleak but nonethe­less sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion. Repeat view­ings might expose fur­ther holes in the sto­ry, but Whan­nell remains a high­ly skilled genre film­mak­er. As for Blum­house, it’s hard to think of anoth­er stu­dio that cur­rent­ly knows its audi­ence as well as they do.

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