The Invisible Man, a rethink of the 1933 James Whale horror classic, asks the question: What if a woman is being stalked by a guy, but nobody believes her because… he’s invisible?
The new version, directed by Leigh Whannell, inverts the H.G. Wells story, making the scientist largely a background figure, and his female victim (architect Cecilia Kass, played by Elisabeth Moss) the main focus. It puts a new spin on the term “ghosting.”
One of the most iconic — if least visible — Universal Monsters to first hit movie screens was Claude Rains as The Invisible Man in 1933. People still remember Rains unwrapping his head bandages to reveal — nothing there! Ever since then, the Invisible Man hasn’t really had a proper rethink. There were a few Universal sequels (including an Invisible Woman played for laughs), a short-lived TV series in the late ‘70s, an appearance in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as well as a Paul Verhoeven remake in the 1990s starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Shue that didn’t quite hit the spot.
Now comes a modern take that touches on the “home invasion” and “stalker ex” suspense tropes, while managing to work in more topical concerns related to #MeToo and #gaslighting.
Put Moss in there as the abused ex, out to convince everyone around her that she isn’t losing her mind, and you have a pretty solid, effective thriller with some clever twists that almost overcomes the logical gaps and leaps of faith along the way.
The Invisible Man comes to us via Blumhouse, makers of Saw, The Purge movies and a recent torture rethink of Fantasy Island (“The pain! The pain!”). Director Whannell actually wrote gory torture thrillers like Saw and Insidious, but here he dials down the blood and guts and just ratchets up the tension. Cecilia is first shown trying to escape her possessive BF’s prison-like compound in the California hills. She literally has to scale the concrete walls to make a run for it, but optics guy Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) isn’t so easily brushed off; after she hears from his brother that Adrian has committed suicide, Cecilia, staying with her sister’s cop friend and daughter, is less than convinced and starts getting the feeling there’s someone else in the house with them.
As duvets are mysteriously snatched, skillets suddenly burst into flames, and Cecilia spies indentations in chairs where no one is apparently sitting, she grows increasingly distraught trying to convince everyone around her that something weird’s going on. But it all sounds kinda crazy.
Moss is no stranger to playing crazy or distraught. Her turns in both The Handmaid’s Tale and Us are convincing proof that she’s pretty fearless onscreen — even if she has to look full-blown loopy. As Cecilia, we get the usual signposts — bags under the eyes, unwashed hair — that Adrian’s unseen presence is starting to freak her out. But The Invisible Man works in some neat twists and unexpected shocks, so we stay riveted to a performance that, essentially, has her acting against thin air.
Against all this is a timely message about women not being believed. Without getting too hashtaggy about it, it’s clear Cecilia is a stand-in for every female who’s been sexually harassed, abused, told what to do, what to wear, or that “you’re just being hysterical.”
That being said, The Invisible Man works best if you don’t think too hard about it. One drawback of Cecilia’s point of view is we never really see much evidence of Adrian’s scientific research, other than a few cursory shots of his “lab.” Then there’s the casting of Jackson-Cohen, who’s not real convincing playing an optics genius. When you see Oliver Jackson-Cohen smashing an arm through a car window, you don’t really think “optics genius” so much as “brainless thug.” So that somehow doesn’t quite gel, though he is quite vicious.
Quite a few pivots in the movie were predictable, for me, but if it’s a hit, The Invisible Man could help Universal Pictures restore their Universal Monsters franchise, largely stopped dead in its tracks by the Tom Cruise stiff The Mummy. By updating the stories to modern concerns, and focusing on standalone features that don’t rely on the old-fashioned “interconnected universe” of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman and others, the studio may bring new life to dusty old monsters yet. We shall see.