Movie Review : The Invisible Man (2020)
If you ask anyone which superpower they’d choose to have, invisibility is going to be a popular answer. It’s very telling: being invisible is the ultimate way of avoiding the consequences of your actions. If people can’t see you, they’re can’t stop you or even prove that you did anything. Only assholes would truly enjoy being invisible. That’s why H.G Wells’ original invisible man was a colossal one. But he is a saint in comparison to the psychopath featured in Blumhouse’s new adaptation. The Invisible Man is wild, violent and over-the-top in the best possible way.
In this contemporary retelling, the titular invisible man is named Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and he’s a world leader in optics research. He’s also an abusive, controlling and insanely violent spouse. That’s why his girlfriend Cecilia Kass (the immense Elizabeth Moss) decides to fuck off in the first scene and start over. A couple weeks later, Cecilia learns that Adrian killed himself and left her 5 million dollars. This is where shit start going sideways and unexplained occurrences start happening. Dead might not be the best word to describe what Adrian’s going through.
One of the great things this movie does is communicate how terrifying Adrian is through the acting of Elizabeth Moss and Michael Dorman, who plays his brother Tom. Adrian is invisible for the vast majority of the movie and the awfulness of his character is communicated through the consequences of his actions and behavior on other people’s lives. Not only it’s a detail that anchors a movie with such a wild premise in a believable reality, but it also portrays an abusive spouse without turning him into a tired stereotype. He’s powerful enough to inspire terror even in his absence.
Don’t get me wrong, The Invisible Man is very much a science fiction thriller. But it has freakin’ range. It goes from domestic abuse to weird-ass laboratories and fighting invisible opponents just like Jurassic Park goes from Dr. Grant’s learning not to be a deadbeat dad to dinosaurs or Die Hard goes from John McClain’s struggling marriage to murdering Germans by the dozen. That makes a movie immensely rewatchable. If the circumstances are iconic and the characters relatable, you’re always going to turn to movies that can do that in order to experience certain precise emotions.
There’s a lot of things I loved about The Invisible Man: there’s nods to classic science fiction, Hitchcockian inspiration, etc. But what I liked the most is that it really knows what it is and it doesn’t try to be “important”. It manages to make a great feminist statement without ever pulling away from the woman-fights-invisible-man storyline. It’s not full of itself. Writer and director Leigh Whannell was not exactly known for nuance or range before The Invisible Man, but he’s made a pretty strong statement here. Confident writing speaks for itself. It doesn’t need to make editorial statements.
Needless to say, I really, really liked The Invisible Man. Way more than I thought I would. It’s a movie that delivers exactly what it promises to, with great nuance and precision. It doesn’t try to be more than what it is (a science fiction thriller) and it ends up being way more than that. This is an instant classic. It’s a movie you’re going to watch whenever it’s on television and that you would’ve bought in DVD ten years ago. A movie with mainstream appeal and a blissful don’t give a fuck attitude. I see you, Leigh Whannell. I didn’t see you before, but now I see the shit out of you.
8.6/10
