Movie Reaction: The Invisible Man

Formula: (Hollow Man - Paul Verhoeven) * Enough

2020 has been a fun year for horror fans so far. While I don't see any instant classics out there, the volume of releases getting national distribution has been impressive. As of writing this, 7 of the top 15 releases this year are horror movies*. That's insane. And it's been a variety of horror movies too. Sequels, remakes, Sci-Fi, fairy tale, high-concept, low-concept, major studio, minor studio. It's all over the place. In short, I'm loving it.

*The Invisible Man, Fantasy Island, The Grudge, Underwater, The Turning, Gretel & Hansel, and Brahms: The Boy II. Shout out to The Lodge as well.

The Invisible Man is the latest and best of these horror movies yet. After Universal's attempt at a Dark Universe fell hard when The Mummy bombed hard a couple years ago, they've pivoted to a strategy that makes a lot more sense. The Invisible Man uses that familiar premise to tell its own standalone story. It goes in assuming the audience is aware of the traditional invisible man story and uses that for new scares.

The story this time is a twist on a toxic relationship story. Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) leaves her abusive boyfriend in the middle of the night. She hides at the house of a single and attractive detective friend of her sister's. A couple weeks later, she finds out that her ex-boyfriend killed himself. Soon after, she starts getting terrorized by a force she can't see. It's impossible to tell this story without it being a little convoluted. In this case, the ex-boyfriend is an expert in the field of optics - think, Tony Stark for eyes - and finds a way to make himself invisible. They don't get more into how this works than they need to. There's also not much to explain how he could've faked his own death. Just go with it.

I have some nitpicky issues with specific character decisions and some story beats, but mostly I was impressed with how fully this movie understood its strengths. The danger of this invisible man isn't how close he can get to someone undetected. Rather, it's about how he can ruin someone's life as a ghost. This movie is more similar to Unsane than Hollow Man. It does a great job showing how Cecilia can lose all of her allies. It doesn't just use "she's a broken woman" as a cover-all excuse for every wrong decision she makes. She's backed into a corner, and you can understand why people would choose to believe what they see rather than what she says.

I love the way this movie is shot. It doesn't over-rely on the visual tricks. The shot of the hand print on the shower door wasn't even in the movie. Instead, it throws in shots taken from a distance, like someone is observing the scene. It uses empty space so well. I got to the point where I would see the invisible man in the room just from how they framed a shot. Writer/director Leigh Whannell seems to be fully aware of how silly "invisible man" action shots can look, so she limits them. The are only a few times where we see an item floating in midair. The physicality of different people fighting the invisible man looks believable, in large part because of how brief the interactions are.

I feel like I'm out of ways to describe what's great about Elisabeth Moss. She has a beautiful face for heightened movies like this. She wears panic and desperation well. Her eyes do so much work that she barely has to say anything to convey a point. While she's an incredibly versatile actress, her best mode is when she's a giant ball of anxiety. It mixes so well with her steely determination. It's hard to think of many other actresses who could've pulled this role off so well. The movie shows as little of Oliver Jackson-Cohen as the titular character as possible, which is a great move. For most of the movie, his character is a faceless malevolent being. He's a force more than a character. Aldis Hodge and Storm Reid as the father and daughter Cecilia is staying with are fine in supporting roles. It's not their movie, so I can't fault them for having pretty simplistic characters. Same with Harriet Dyer as Moss's sister.

Oh man, this is one of my favorite types of Reactions to write. I began this in a "Weakly Recommend" mindset, but thinking back on the movie, I'm realizing how much I really liked it. This is a great use of major studio resources for a horror film. It's a movie star movie. It packs enough twists to earn the two-hour run-time. Minimal reliance on effects. Great use of atmosphere. It has fun with playing with audience expectations. What's not to like about it?

Verdict: Strongly Recommend