"The Invisible Man" review

The next installment of the hotly anticipated "Dark Universe" is here! Yes this is sarcasm.



In an act of feedback processing so substantial and effective that I'm still struggling to process that it emerged from the Hollywood studio system, "The Invisible Man" serves as perhaps a more effective death knell for the long and laughably buried concept of the "Dark Universe" than even the flopping of "The Mummy (2017)."

Director Leigh Whannell's modern interpretation of the story of a brilliant scientist named Griffin taking advantage of his recent scientific breakthrough to become invisible to the naked eye and using that ability to feed into his darkest impulses and desires as a full fledged villain protagonist takes a change of perspective to examine more contemporary issues with a classic tale of science fiction horror.

Elisabeth Moss plays Cecilia, a woman who has broken away from her disturbed and abusive boyfriend Adrian Griffin. Recovering from the traumatic after effects of domestic abuse, she's contacted by her ex's legal team, shocked to discover that Griffin has killed himself and left her with his fortune.

With her relationship behind her and the path to recovery and security preserved, Cecilia now finds strange happenings occuring around her, forcing her to question if Griffin is truly gone and how he could still be haunting her.

Conceptually, "The Invisible Man" is very much a case of what you see is what you get; a narcissistic sociopath terrorizes his victim for daring to have free will that opposes his desires by striving to be more of a psychological threat than a physical one.

The movie is so lean on fat and to the point that the mad science that goes into making its idea a reality is only barely gleaned over in background details so much so that you'd almost think this film was created as part of some sort of pre-existing universe.

Fortunately, that's not the case. The film leaves things open for possible continuation to be pursued at the behest of studio greed but actually ends on a satisfying and thoughtful note while clearly aiming to revel in a sense of intimacy that distances itself from the high profile failure of rebooting the "Universal Monsters" into a "superhero-esque" shared continuity that's plagued cinemas since the aborted plans of "Dracula: Untold" back in 2014.

Whannell's distinct style of visual and sensory direction is where the real meat of the film come from.

"The Invisible Man" makes no effort to mask its tale as an allegory for the trials of breaking free of domestic abuse and the filmmaking expended to bring it to life is so staggeringly efficient that I'd go as far as to warn any victims of PTSD to be prepared for something that may feel all too profoundly real.

The character's may find themselves in compromising positions but none of them are dumb in the slightest. Cecillia has to struggle with exposing the threat in order to get the help that she needs knowing fully that to an outsider, she's only coming across as someone damaged in the midst of a psychological breakdown, while simultaneously reflecting on the gaslighting that this puts her at the center of as being the exact sort of thing that she was struggling so hard to run away from, seemingly to no avail.

She's living the worst nightmare of anybody that's ever suffered trauma; being forced to surround yourself with what you fear, confronting it to no sense of reward or accomplishment and with even the most beloved and trustworthy pillars of your safety network wavering under the belief that you're in the wrong for reasons that you can't even necessarily blame them for.

The trickery of the camera and subtle details of the sets and lighting all make the movie feel consistently like the creepiest and most uneasy parts of the best "Paranormal Activity" movies but without the swaths of nothingness and stupidity that make those so terrible.

Every frame is packed with the smallest detail that contributes to a tensely edited experience that compelled my attention when I wasn't struggling to stare away from the screen, overwhelmed by a sense of anxiety undoubtedly shared by and amplified within the protagonist herself as to what was going to come next.

Whannell's proven himself to be good with actors in his previous endeavors but this is easily Elisabeth Moss' movie from start to finish. To say that she perfectly walks a tightrope between symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD would be a disservice to the brilliance of her work here.

Moss fully embodies a character that feels so human I left the theater hoping she's just really good at her job or has sought help if pulling from some sort of applicable experience.

Her fears and anxieties are ingrained psychologically by a profoundly damaging experience without devolving into a one-note fear of everything without rationale and her struggle to combat this anxiety to stop her mad scientist stalker makes doesn't end with this damage being erased or glossed over. She has to deal with what has happened to her for the rest of her life and this is the first hurdle of it.

"The Invisible Man" is a simple yet unique and impactful thriller that may lean a tad bit too heavily on its contemporary vision of analyzing trauma and domestic abuse, as the science fiction aspects that allow its premise to unfold and culminate in a climax that may be a tad bit too action-oriented for its own good are so underdeveloped they can almost make the title concept feel like an oddity in its own feature.

If you're willing to roll with its admittedly B-movie leaning vibe however and can fully process just how raw the experience it depicts can get, it's perhaps one of the best horror movies to grace screens in quite some time and a brilliant high bar for the genre to aspire to in the new decade.

8 Light Refractions out of 10