The Invisible Man

The first half was on track for a five-star review. Whannell fires off one idea after another; the last time I enjoyed contemporary horror with a similarly fresh and innovative take was Wan’s first instalment of the Conjuring franchise. Wan and Whannell have quite a few things in common – both are undoubtedly clever creators who made do with modest means in their early days, relying on talent and inventiveness without any big budget to speak of. The excellent Upgrade simply wasn’t a lucky accident. It is clear to me now – and I would in fact bet my Blu-ray collection on it – that one big studio or another will make a move also on Whannell, who may look forward to a promising directing career (Scott Derrickson, another great talent, came from similar beginnings). Sadly, the second half of The Invisible Man somewhat turns into a B-movie spectacle, and I didn’t have as much fun. But the slightly cynical ending with a nice zinger was pleasant enough. Unlike Elizabeth Moss. She has no charisma, lacks feminine fragility…and what’s worse, she can’t act :o). (22/03/2020)

At the cinema after three and a half months (!), during which I watched old quarantine B-movies on a TV screen outside my home, and I immediately got such a great film! This is a very respectable way to catch up on the backlog from the beginning of the year, having already been impressed by Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. Whannell’s The Invisible Man starts off on the principles of ghostly horror, then shifts into a sophisticated paranoid cat-and-mouse game, which culminates in a murder thriller with polished action visuals that will leave you breathless. Each of the film’s three phases demonstrates Whannell’s knowledge of genre rules and the inventiveness of his screenwriting and directing. This isn’t the work of a mere craftsman, as the film contains suspense built brilliantly through only the viewer’s lack of awareness and intense dark music, a shocking twist that will make you hold your breath like nothing (!) you have seen in a long time, creative and intelligent playing with genre clichés, well-thought-out sets and delicate camera acrobatics. And he packs all of this into an admirably bold runtime in order to bring us maximum satisfaction. (08/06/2020)

The much poked-at feminist subtext is effective, of course, but I enjoyed more the smartly transtextual format that hides the invisible male threat. Another great thing is the notional absence of a prologue and the immediate connection to the perspective of a troubled woman who desperately wants to get free from the shackles of her husband – I think the opening sequence is the best part of the whole film. The enemy is profiled gradually, mainly through the dialogues of other characters, the presentation of his lavish mansion and the maturely articulated MeToo campaign, while we are forced to keep our fingers crossed for the heroine from the get go; and in the second half Whannel can stop generating tension mainly through individual scenes (with more references to well-known horror movies than it may appear at first glance and with the lack of a visible enemy) and move on to motifs of surprise and to pique the curiosity through the story as a whole (how did he set it all up and get others to believe Cecilia?). Thanks to the transtextual genre distinctiveness, the film is much more sophisticated than just “abused woman escaping her rich husband” and lets the viewer pose interpretive challenges, but, on the other hand, most questions are answered too soon, or can be easily figured out, and the ending is like mandatory satisfaction rather than a bold resolution to the various genre and motivational concepts. But I have to admit that everything holds very well together and, with the exception of a couple of scenes with questionable effect after a second viewing, this is a superbly directed intersection between classic horror from Universal and a modern genre play with the viewer, the kind of which we don’t see very often. The scene with the paint in the attic and its climax in particular scared me almost as much as the sequence in the ventilation duct of the first Alien. 80% (14/03/2020)

The talented Leigh Whannell delivers the first solid horror film of the year. I liked Upgrade a tad more, but he has done a decent job with Invisible Man, it's already clear that the film will join the ranks of successful remakes. Elisabeth Moss gives a strong female performance (she is one of the least likable actresses and even if she is not the best looking, she at least makes up for it with a solid performance). I'm not familiar with the original, so I went in more or less blind, and the story is interesting and engaging enough. The film's strongest points are definitely the music, which completes the perfect, almost intense atmosphere, there’s plenty of suspense and unexpected twists. The downside for me was the slower pace in the first half, and I was also hoping for Whanell to dabble in violence, which he surprisingly avoids completely, and for that a point down. Satisfied, but I was expecting something more intense. 8/10. (01/03/2020)

I’m struggling a bit with a certain formal sterility, but I guess that kind of goes with the territory of hi-tech thrillers, and more than once I was snapped out of it by the fact that Elisabeth Moss often looks like Jeffrey Tambor wearing a wig. Still, I'm giving it full marks because I haven't seen such perfect drama in a genre film in a long time, allowing the film to graduate from intimate drama/horror to near-sci-fi actioner (a one-shot in which an invisible man beats up about ten people FTW) without retreating from the overarching theme of the seemingly irrational trauma of a victim of psychological abuse. Nor should Whannell's individual visual ideas be overlooked, such as the shot during the opening titles of a wave crashing from the ocean's perspective just before the waves break on the rocks. Or those sadistic camera glances into the void, depicting the protagonist's sense of the antagonist's omnipresence. It's really very clever. As an added bonus, I'd like to announce that I really wish more of the lead heroine roles were cast with these atypical, interesting, and adult types of actresses like Moss. Her character development works here in large part because she can believably play all the different roles she has here, and when she flips into the role of the hunter, that’s a satisfaction I sorely crave. Let the kids who bounce to movies from PornHub maybe shit themselves. (04/06/2020)