Mark Reviews Movies: THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 28, 2020

Shortly after our protagonist first fights the invisible man, she runs out of the house and down the street. Her escape is seen from the viewpoint of a neighbor's security camera. That's all it sees: her escape. Even then, would anyone who watches the video of this incident perceive it as an escape? All they would see is a woman, looking distraught and in distress, running down the street in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. Even if the invisible man is chasing her, no one would see him. We can only see what's visible, but we also see only what we want to see.

This moment, despite how mundane it might seem following a visceral battle with an invisible entity, is shattering within the context of The Invisible Man, because no one can or is willing to see what that running woman has experienced. She is alone in her knowledge and her trauma, and that image—of a woman sprinting from pain that only she can know—is devastating.

The film is an update and a complete re-imagining of both H.G. Wells' 1897 novel and James Whale's 1933 film adaptation (not to mention every other piece of media that has adapted or been inspired by either of those). It is so different, in fact, that Wells isn't credited at all, but we all know that story, anyway: a man turns himself invisible through science and, as a result, goes mad with his newfound potential for power and becomes murderous.

This film was written and directed by Leigh Whannell, who takes the idea of a man who turns himself invisible by means of science and turns the entire tale on its head. The invisible man is not the protagonist, neither anti-hero nor tragic hero. He is obsessed with power, wholly controlling, and capable of some violence even before he puts his invisibility experiment into practice.

He's a wealthy man, making in fortune by pioneering optical technology, and he is also an abuser. He has been one, as far as we can tell, for his entire life, and his abuse isn't just physical. He is an expert manipulator, isolating the target of his abuse until he or she feels so alone that, even if anyone would believe his victim, the person might not even feel as if there is anyone else to whom to turn.

His current target is his live-in girlfriend Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss), who, at the story's start, is preparing to escape him. She opens her eyes in the middle of the night, removes her boyfriend's hand from her waist, and makes sure that the drugs she has dissolved in his drink have put him into a deep enough sleep.

Cecilia walks through the house, with the stone walls of its modern architecture making it feel like a prison, and gathers her things. After climbing a ten-foot-tall wall (It really is a prison), she runs to the road, where her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer) arrives in a car. No sooner has Cecilia entered the vehicle than her boyfriend Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is rushing at it. He bangs on the window and then breaks it with his fist.

The sisters flee, and that, in theory, should be the end of Adrian's ability to terrorize Cecilia. It isn't.

Even after Adrian apparently commits suicide, Cecilia is convinced that she can sense his presence in a house, readied for her by her friend James (Aldis Hodge), a cop who is willing to believe everything until he can't or won't, and his daughter Sydney (Storm Reid). At first, it's that tingling sensation of being watched, and later, more tangible evidence emerges—that someone who cannot be seen is stalking her, playing games with her mind, and ready to destroy whatever she has left of the life he ruined.

Despite its horror and thriller trappings, Whannell's film is really a potent examination of abuse and its lingering effects on the mind of the survivor. This isn't just some exploitative plot point. The concept is built into every facet of the film.

Its terror is in Cecilia's belief that malicious eyes are watching. Its horror is in seeing that malice approaching her, as well as in the knowledge that no one will be capable or willing to believe her. The film's dread is in knowing that violence is inevitable, as we scan every part of the frame for some sign of the invisible presence from which that violence will come.

On a formal level, it is a pristinely crafted film, as well. Whannell, working with Stefan Duscio, trains us early to look in the negative space of the frame—turning the camera toward, remaining on a shot of, or cutting to a seemingly empty part of a room. At first, it's nothing, because Whannell is only preparing us for the future, while also keeping us in suspense for the moment when nothing will become something (A chilling moment has a knife appearing—in midair, where we know nothing was or could be—after a cut).

Apparent establishing shots, moving through halls and rooms, are gradually revealed to be subjective ones. There's a subtle adjustment late in the film, as we realize that the character whose perspective we believe we're watching is actually a few steps ahead of the camera. In terms of scare mechanics, the trickery, like the scheming camerawork, escalates in stages: Nothing becomes a knife falling from a counter, without any clank on the floor, and that becomes the flame of a stovetop erupting.

Speaking of the absence of sound, Whannell, a long-time participant in horror filmmaking (This is only his third film as a director), does away with the typical musical sting that accompanies so many scare tactics. If his framing is as much about negative space as it is what we can see, his soundscapes are created in a similar manner. The absence of sound is what's suspenseful. Little noises, such as the distant buzzing of a hidden cellphone or an invisible foot quietly crushing a spot of carpet, are the dread-inducing payoff—until that invisible presence intensifies his terrorizing techniques.

There's an undeniable sense of the hopeless to the story, which finds ingenious but believable (within the context of the material, obviously) ways to further isolate Cecilia from any potential help, and the ultimate payoff is as subdued (a conversation talking around the truth) as it is satisfying. Moss' performance, a dynamic embodiment of trauma, ensures that even the improbable elements of the story have the backbone of veracity to them.

This is a genuinely distressing and nerve-racking film, because its very fiber is composed of trauma, pain, and hopelessness. The Invisible Man is a Kafkaesque nightmare of knowing the truth, watching as everything falls apart, and realizing that people who should believe the horror of that truth are incapable of or averse to doing so.

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