The Invisible Man (2020)

Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Harriet Dyer, Michael Dorman, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen
Grade: B+

Because of Tom Cruise’s The Mummy failing, Universal had to go back to the drawing board regarding their planned “Dark Universe”. As a result, we got the standalone reimagining of The Invisible Man. Honestly, it was pretty good. If Universal continues this trend, I wouldn’t mind seeing a reimagining of Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Wait, was that The Shape of Water?

Summary

Living in a beautiful house and far away from the nearest town, with the very wealthy optics engineer Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is Cecilia Kass (Moss). At 3AM, Cecilia wakes up to run away and escape Adrian because he’s an abusive psychopath. She plans this whole thing out to perfection. She drugs him and manages to escape to her sister Emily (Dyer), who drives up in the getaway car. Cecilia just barely gets away, with Adrian sprinting after them just as she gets into the car. Two weeks later, Cecilia is staying with her friend Detective James Lanier (Hodge) and his young daughter Sydney (Reid). She’s very traumatized and is still very scared of the possibility of Adrian showing up because of how controlling and wickedly intelligent the man was. Because of this, she’s afraid to leave the house. Emily comes to visit Cecilia, but she freaks out on Emily because Adrian might have followed her. Then, Emily reveals some surprisingly good news to her:

Adrian committed suicide. Yay!

Soon after, Cecilia is given a letter telling her that she is in Adrian’s will. Her and Emily go to meet Adrian’s lawyer and brother Tom (Dorman). Tom explains that Cecilia is getting $5 million dollars, state and income tax free. It will be released in installments of $100,000 a month for four years or so, as long as she doesn’t commit a crime (among other things). She accepts the money and the first thing she does is buy James a ladder since he was painting in an earlier scene. In addition, she gives money to Sydney to pay for her dream college in full, and graduate school if she wants. Shortly after this, strange occurrences start to happen that arouse suspicion from Cecilia. Things like her breakfast being set on fire when she was cooking, her consistently hearing noises and movements, the front door being open one night, and one particular incident where her blanket is pulled off of her don’t seem to be normal happenings. Regarding the blanket incident, she goes to pick it up and there is a clear outline of two invisible feet holding it down to stop her from grabbing it. She freaks out, but James comes in the room and calms her down. Later, Cecilia goes on a job interview but when asked to pull out her portfolio, she finds that none of her papers are in her binder. Following this, she passes out. After some blood tests at the hospital, she gets a call later and is told that diazepam was in her system. This is what caused it.

This drug was the exact same one she used on Adrian when she escaped his dungeon of a house.

Looking over in her bathroom, she notices that the exact bottle from that night, with Adrian’s bloodstained fingerprints on it, is sitting there on the counter of her sink. There can only be one explanation: this motherfucker is still alive! James goes with her to see Tom. This is where Cecilia demands that Adrian stop it. Tom acts ignorant to the whole thing and somewhat arrogant about it, but Cecilia pleads her case. Eventually, she deduces that the only explanation for all of this is that this optics engineer genius has somehow figured out a way to make himself invisible. Tom assures her Adrian is dead, and James looks at her like she’s crazy. However, Cecilia is correct in her hypothesis, and the mind games Adrian is playing have only just begun.

My Thoughts:

We have seen a lot of modern takes on classic stories fail, but 2020’s The Invisible Man does a very good job at giving the story just as many thrills as the original, while adding a whole new arc that deviates from the source material in all the right ways. Though it would’ve been awesome to see the Johnny Depp adaptation originally planned, the film we are given instead was a very good consolation prize.

With new age filmmakers not being afraid to shine the light on such important topics like domestic abuse, toxic relationships that seem inescapable, and the true terror one finds themselves in when being connected to the wrong person, director and writer Leigh Whannell puts a wonderfully exciting spin on the well-known story to make it a completely different film, as we look through the female perspective on what it’s like dealing with a real-life monster. Here, we see the poor Cecilia being tormented by this evil genius of a man, purely because he’s manipulative psycho who wants to trap everyone he comes into contact with. Sadly, he’s so rich and powerful, he can do it and get away with it. In doing so, he trapped Cecilia to the point where she had to make a run for it and almost didn’t escape. Despite everything that has transpired, Adrian refuses to let her win. He can’t. His ego won’t let him, and his twisted perspective and violent ways give him no other alternative. Instead of showing up and attacking her though, he decides to make it his personal goal to mess with his ex-girlfriend’s head, devoting every waking second to destroying her life for leaving his. This is a real monster. No, he may not have claws, vampire fangs, or gills, but this version of Adrian Griffin shows us what a true, real-life monster can be. Not only is it a gripping thriller that will have your attention from start to finish, Leigh Whannell is able to weave in ever-important topics of toxic, abusive, and manipulative relationships seamlessly to give this story a lot of emotional depth and trauma in understanding our two main characters.

Adrian wants to, and will, be in control of his relationship at all times. Though it may seem crazy, these types of partners do exist in real life. It’s startling to say it, but both women and men have been involved, or know someone that has been involved, in some extremely controlling relationships on varying levels. A lot of the time, they can’t find a way out either, whether it be because sympathy, mixed emotions, being manipulated, threatened, or whatever else.

This is the case with Cecilia, but it’s cranked up tenfold.

The twitchy-eyed Elisabeth Moss is very good as our trauma-filled victim. From the start, we know she’s innocent and just stuck in the worst situation possible, but as the story progresses and everyone thinks she’s crazy, Moss plays into it very well. The screaming, emotions, expressions, and the horror seen in her pupils makes every scene mean something. We are drawn in with each coming scene and because of how good Moss is and how well this story is thought out piece by piece, there is a serious claustrophobic feel to the narrative as if there is no way out for our protagonist. Even when there’s technically no one in the room actor-wise, she is able to make us feel just as nervous in anticipation as she looks. You don’t know what is real and what isn’t. Neither does Cecilia and neither does any of the supporting characters who only half-heartedly believe her. When the time is right, and she tries her ass off to fight back against a mastermind who seemingly outmatches in her every conceivable way, you will find yourself standing on your feet rooting for her like she’s a real-life superhero going against an all-time level villain who we don’t even get to know personally until the third act. The underrated Aldis Hodge is also very good as the lovable single father and good friend of Cecilia. He’s got this warming and reassuring quality about him in the way he speaks and carries himself. Hodge has been in a lot of new releases as of late, and he’s shown a lot of promise. Honestly, he’s slowly becoming a personal favorite of mine. No matter the size of the role he has in any movie he’s in, he brings it and leaves us with a memorable impression.

I’m very excited for his future in Hollywood. He has loads of untapped potential.

I also need to mention Oliver Jackson-Cohen. He’s only on screen for a little bit, but he does a great job at making Adrian Griffin the absolute piece of shit scumbag he is, playing the type of abuser who is good-looking enough that people may not believe the victim. How many times have we seen this in the media? Constantly you’ll hear, “I don’t know. He just doesn’t look like that type of guy”, when in reality he is. He’s just a fucking liar. He’s scary good in the limited time he interacts with Moss’s Cecilia. That idea of being in control brings a whole level of terror to his character before we see a full scene with him, making their inevitable interaction in the end feel like a PPV main event spectacle, worthy of the buildup it took to get there. It was everything we were waiting for. We know what Adrian is about, even if he doesn’t show it directly and only implies things. It’s a chilling scene, capping off one hell of a thriller in the most satisfying way possible.

With all of the positives coming out of this film, there were still a great deal of moments that take us out of the film because of pure stupidity. There’s a scene where an invisible Adrian punches James’s daughter Sydney. For some reason, she assumes it’s Cecilia, and her and James freak out on her. Now, it would make sense for Sydney to assume Cecilia did it if they were close to each other, but she was clear across the room. Unless she’s Manute Bol, there’s no way Cecilia could’ve hit her with a right cross! This could’ve easily been fixed had Cecilia hugged her and then Sydney got punched. However, for them to be so far apart from each other, and for her to think Cecilia did it, was laughable. Since it seemed like such a simple fix, what was presented felt kind of lazy.

There was also an important scene where the invisible Adrian follows our protagonist into the attic. Aware of his presence, she throws a full-gallon paint bucket onto him to see where he’s at. Because of this, the paint covers his face and upper body, so how in the fuck does he escape this scene undetected? Has anyone ever painted anything before? Do you know how hard it is to get paint off of your clothes? It’s virtually impossible! This is why when we get any bit of paint on our clothes, we refer to them forever as “paint clothes”! Now, can you imagine getting paint on a multi-million-dollar invisibility suit? How does he get the paint off so quickly? All we see is some white paint in the kitchen sink! That’s it! There aren’t even footprints past the hallway! There’s no way in hell he cleans all that paint off that quickly, especially because even in the context of the movie, there was very little time between Cecilia in the attic and her coming back down to find Adrian. A fucking gallon was poured onto his entire upper body! You can’t wash that off in 30 seconds unless you have some sort of cleaning apparatus on your suit, but this would have been established in the narrative had it been true. For those trying to argue that he did, this can’t be because then he would have no need to wash it in the sink. Call me picky all you want, but this was too illogical to let slide.

I’ve painted a lot of things. I would know.

Then, there’s also the twist in the restaurant scene. Though I won’t spoil it, it is used to incriminate her, but I don’t see how because a fucking security camera would either prove her innocence or put her on the news for having telekinetic powers! The security camera issue comes into play at the beginning of the climax too. In a mental health facility, there’s cameras all over the place. Knowing this, why did all of these guards still make it their number one priority to re-capture Cecilia instead of taking out the masked figure that just took out fifteen, armed security personnel? Why don’t you ask them if Cecilia is responsible? I’m sure they would tell you. Depending on how things are handled, I can get past stuff like this, but these logistical issues were too alarming to not talk about, knocking the film down a few noticeable pegs.

Regardless of some of these relatively absurd moments within the story, this is still a very compelling take on the classic story and character we all know and love. Within film and television, there is a constant discussion of how tired we are of reboots, remakes, and adaptations of books and stories we’ve seen made before, but Leigh Wannell’s The Invisible Man is a reimagining that shows us that with the right creative mind crafting the story, there can still be an imaginative take worth watching on a character we have seen before. With a relevant narrative making this more than just a “Universal Monsters” movie, an abundance of twists and turns you don’t see coming, and a cast who surprises, 2020’s The Invisible Man is a very exciting horror film that will surprise you with how entertaining it is. As you stare wide-eyed at the screen and feelings of anxiousness course through your veins, you will think constantly, “How in the fuck is she going to get out of this?”. If questions like this cross your mind and you actually care to find out the answer, then you know they did a good job.