Film Review: The Invisible Man
A Classic Movie Monster Finds New Life
Timely, relevant, and genuinely terrifying, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man recontextualizes a classic Universal monster into a modern examination of abuse, toxicity, and gaslighting. With impeccable spatial awareness, gripping soundscapes, and an unforgettable performance from Elisabeth Moss, The Invisible Man isn’t just one of 2020’s best horror movies, it’s one of its best films, period. Minor spoilers ahead…
Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) lies awake in the middle of the night. Fueled by steely resolve and a bundle of raw nerves, she extricates herself from the bed she shares with her boyfriend, carefully displacing his arm so as not to wake him. Frantically, but methodically, she slinks through the sterile hallways of his post-modern mansion, nudges security cameras out of place, and retrieves a go-bag hidden in one of the vents. Taking in this opening scene of director Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, two things are for sure: This has been a long time coming, and for Cecilia, this is no mere secret getaway, but a daring escape. With but a fleeting glimpse of a slumbering Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), The Invisible Man’s nail-biting preface tells us everything we need to know about what kind of man he is and exactly what kind of relationship he’s wrought upon his girlfriend, and with no exposition.
After her flight from Adrian’s fortress of control, Cecilia seeks refuge with her friend James (Aldis Hodge) and his teenage daughter Sydney (Storm Reid), where she soon finds out that her longtime abuser has apparently taken his own life. However, when strange things start happening around her, Cecilia begins to believe that Adrian - a genius optics scientist and mogul - may not be as dead as everyone says.
Taking a page out of Whannell’s previous feature, 2018’s Upgrade, The Invisible Man is full of lean and economical choices. Like its suspenseful opening scene, the film speaks volumes with its absences and omissions, perhaps even more so than what’s portrayed on screen. Whannell and cinematographer Stefan Duscio are particularly adept at weaponizing negative space and silence - empty chairs, vacant hallways, and quiet lulls instill a deeply frightening paranoia, sold even further by a powerhouse performance from Elisabeth Moss. As Cecilia, Moss sells a palpable fear not of an invisible monster, but of the all-too-real specter of domestic abuse. This new invisible man is a clever redux of a classic H.G. Wells character and Universal boogeyman; by shifting the focus onto Cecilia, Whannell is able to strip Griffin of sympathy and tragedy, and by making his invisibility tech-based, the narrative cleverly makes motivations crystal clear: There’s no personality-altering serum, no mood-destabilizing potion - this man was a monster born long before he ever donned his high-tech, light-bending suit.
“Taking a page out of Whannell’s previous feature, 2018’s Upgrade, The Invisible Man is full of lean and economical choices.”
Underneath its sci-fi horror veneer, the most frightening aspects of The Invisible Man remain its depictions of gaslighting. The term “gaslighting” has been consistently overused and misused ever since entering the zeitgeist a few years ago: Where many will use the term interchangeably with “lying” and “manipulation,” gaslighting is in fact a very specific form of psychological abuse and destabilization, and one that The Invisible Man portrays to a T. It begins slowly; at first, Cecilia believes she’s being watched. Then, objects begin to magically shift location. And by the time things escalate to full-on assault and psychological torment, it’s clear what Adrian’s agenda is: To make Cecilia believe she is going mad. As her friends label her as paranoid and her support systems are cut out from under her, literally and figuratively, Cecilia begins sinking deeper and deeper into despair. And while the film can be a little too on-the-nose at times, its depiction of abuse seems real enough, only amplified by the fact that our villain can’t be seen. All of this is a testament to Elisabeth Moss and her incredible performance, often conveying complex emotions and the whole spectrum of a mental breakdown with just facial tics and pure expressions of terror.
The pacing of the The Invisible Man is excellent, but it does gradually lose its own texture the farther it goes along. There’s never really any doubt of Cecilia’s sanity instilled in the audience, and by the time of the film’s denouement, the compelling psychological aspects and the allegory of abuse have mostly been sidelined in favor of a slick sci-fi horror actioner. But where The Invisible Man shines, it shines brightly. As a film that traffics in the devastating wake of abuse fused with a clever reimagining of a classic Hollywood monster, The Invisible Man is grim, taut, and compelling, buoyed by one of the best performances of the year.
Starting his career with pure horror projects such as Saw and Insidious, Leigh Whannell’s more recent directorial efforts have moved onto a curious subsection: lean and mean genre films infused with timely and relevant commentary. With 2018’s Upgrade and now The Invisible Man, his trajectory as one of the most exciting genre filmmakers has become a fascinating one, and I for one, am immensely curious as to what he’s going to do next.
