The Invisible Man – Review

Hey, remember the Dark Universe? Back in 2017, when Universal Pictures tried to do the Marvel thing to its many classic movie monsters and give them a shared universe to fight and be fought in? And which, much like its supposed jumpstarter, The Mummy, was dead on arrival? Remember that? No? Good. You, like me, might have been beset and surrounded by cinematic universes, and afraid of having to use your own two eyes and moments of your only life to watch a trailer where the Bride of Frankenstein does a cool flip over the Creature from the Black Lagoon or whatever, made the commendable choice to stop caring. Flash-forward with me now–it’s 2020, and the fracturing of the Dark Universe has had at least two notable positive consequences:

1. There is not and will likely never be any such movie as The Bride’s Cool Flip Over The Creature From That Other Movie, Remember?
2. Instead of being yoked to a hoary crossover series of middling movies, The Invisible Man is tightly constructed, constantly unnerving, and genuinely pretty great. 

This intro is admittedly overblown, but no matter how many times I edited this review I felt like I needed to keep it to communicate how thrown I am by the quality of The Invisible Man, a movie whose elevator pitch (scion of the Dark Universe, produced by Blumhouse, inspired by a century-old property, movie about a woman getting beaten up a lot) has very little in its corner. I held my nose and made the dive for Elizabeth Moss, a consistently excellent actor, and I’m so thankful I did, because, turns out, it’s my favorite movie I’ve seen this year. 

The Invisible Man takes its title and license from the 1933 movie (and 1897 novel) of the same name, but besides its obvious central conceit it really doesn’t have much in common with either. This is a good thing, because this 2020 adaptation is, with all due respect to H.G. Wells, more nuanced than its original source, a story largely about an invisible dude who just loves killing and little else. This version, however, opens on Moss’ character, Cecilia, waking up next to someone, grabbing a go-bag, and sneaking out of a palatial seaside estate. It doesn’t tell us why, but the conclusions it lets us draw are correct, and this tense opening is not only strikingly effective as a horror setpiece, but as a mission statement–The Invisible Man, aside from its obvious central conceit, does not draw its tension from implausible sources.

The horror of Cecilia’s abusive boyfriend Adrian works perfectly as a dramatic device, and smartly, writer and director Leigh Whannell never attempts to stray far from it. Rather, The Invisible Man couches its plot entirely in the physical and emotional havoc an abusive ex could wreak, and treats the invisibility as more of a tool in Adrian’s arsenal than a central point. I’d call it clever, but clever feels dismissive of its power, so let’s say inspired–not a stretch, since it results in a cleanly constructed and shockingly resonant thriller that, despite being about abuse and gaslighting, never dips its toes into exploitation. This, too, is surprising, since it’s pretty uncommon for a wide-release film of any genre, let alone horror, to exhibit such delicacy and restraint, but it really, really works. We never have to watch a scene of the abuse that drove Cecilia out, a cheap tactic that would tank the movie. Instead, Whannell trusts Moss to tell the story and the audience to understand it, and this not only frees the film from a significant amount of sleaze but makes the whole thing more precise for its excision. It’s a Swiss watch; nearly every piece fits together in seamless ways, and the ending these pieces eventually make is so fitting and concordant I nearly cheered. 

It’s helped, of course, by formidable work from Elizabeth Moss, making an early play for the best leading performance the Academy will still ignore because it hates genre movies. Her Cecilia is immediately and wholly root-for-able, a harrowed woman determined to claw her way out of the hell thrust upon her, and Moss not only brings her signature steel but expertly measures out its emergence. Cecilia’s ingenuity and resolve aren’t a sudden heel-turn from her initial fear to step outside her house, they’re a natural growth, and Moss does a stellar job tracking this change from scene to scene. She’s helped, in turn, by an excellent supporting cast (special honors go to Aldis Hodge’s immensely likeable James) and a surprisingly versatile camera. Stefan Duscio’s cinematography is unconventional but shrewd; it’s thankfully unafraid to linger on Cecilia’s expressive face or a hallway where something might emerge. Something rarely emerges, obviously, but its capability to produce tension from this absence is impressive. Every other shot is just a little off-center, just a second too long, and in a deeply deliberate way that feels downright Hitchcockian. 

In fact, Hitchcock is an apt comparison. The Invisible Man is a well-crafted white-knuckler that’s rife with the same kind of sickening and (mostly) powerless voyeurism. Whannell’s got a long way to go before reaching a seat on that same pantheon, sure, but after the pulpy Upgrade and now this superb razor-wire chiller, he’s made some steps. It isn’t perfect–it’s still inhabited by the thousand natural logic skips that horror films are heir to–but they’re hard to notice and easy to forgive when the movie as a whole is this meticulously outlined and effectively made. The Invisible Man is the best thriller of the year so far, a nauseating film that, even with its central flight of fantasy, will keep you in fear of a clear and present danger. 

Did you get that great pun? I’ll say it again. The Invisible Man is about a clear and present danger. Right? Get it? The review’s done, but did you get it?