The Invisible Man (2020)

[baumer]

Discuss

[baumer]

One of the better horror films I've seen in quite some time.  Full of suspense and just the right amount of gore to satisfy those of us horror fans who still like that stuff.  And there is one HOLY SHIT moment in the film that made me gasp.  The scene in the restaurant where the sister is killed left me shocked.  I truly didn't see that coming.  Kind of left me horrified for a few minutes.  Leigh Whanell has become one of my favourite directors.  He knows how to build suspense and he's done a terrific job here.

 

8.5/10

[Frozen]

I wanted to like this but there were s many plot holes. First off, how did he fake his death? If a person kills themselves their death would be investigated by the police to make sure it wasn’t a murder. How did he get away with that? We saw pictures of his death and a file, but there’s no way he could fake being dead. It’s never explained. 

 

The film claims Adrian supports his brother financially yet the brother appears to be an attorney of some sort. Why does he need money from a brother he hates and why does he need it so badly he’d agree to gaslight a woman he doesn’t know? 

 

How were there no security cameras in the restaurant? And why didn’t anyone think to go check Adrian’s security cameras since he had them all over the place. They would have seen what he was doing? 

 

If she was pregnant, why would Adrain drug her with a dangerous medication and why did he have wine poured when she came to his house? 

[John Marston]

Starts off really good, then becomes incredibly dumb 

[Webslinger]

Leigh Whannell’s lean, stripped-down re-imagining of The Invisible Man is a thoroughly compelling, consistently tense horror film whose execution matches the cleverness of its premise. Rather than trying once again to revive Universal’s moribund monster movie subgenre through a loud, inane special effects extravaganza, Whannell keeps the scope small and the focus uncomfortably intimate by turning the audience’s attention and sympathy not toward the titular character, but rather toward the woman fighting to rid herself of his destructive nature once and for all. Much has already been made of the film’s place as an allegorical reflection of the MeToo movement and a horror film where a large part of the horror is society’s refusal to believe women’s traumatic experiences, and these aims are executed remarkably well without feeling on-the-nose on one end nor unreasonably exploitative on the other. A great deal of the film’s success on creative and allegorical levels falls to Elisabeth Moss, who has finally gotten a role in a mainstream film worthy of her talents. Moss totally invests herself in the part and is scarily convincing in portraying Cecilia’s terror at realizing that her supposedly dead husband is still tormenting her. She plays the role well enough that viewers can see the toll that such extraordinary circumstances take on her while also being able to discern how other characters in the film would view her behavior as “crazy.” Luckily, Moss also gets to work with a script that provides her character with more agency than she gets in her best-known work in The Handmaid’s Tale, and she certainly capitalizes on it. Outside of Moss’s performance, the film also benefits greatly from Whannell’s slow-burn approach to much of the first two-thirds of the running time; static shots feel tense because we’re waiting for some hidden terror to take form. Even once the film shifts to a more action-oriented approach in its final third, the shift feels earned because of how well Whannell has set the stakes and prepared us for the customary big confrontations. There are some logical aspects of the narrative that don’t hold up to much post-viewing scrutiny and the run time is a touch to long for the material at hand, but taken as a whole, The Invisible Man succeeds in fashioning a satisfying horror experience through its cleverly topical approach and well-executed decisions on both sides of the camera.

 

B+

[filmlover]

Takes the classic horror story and effectively modernizes it into a Sleeping with the Enemy-style thriller feels very fitting for our current day and age. You really have to completely suspend disbelief at certain points, but Leigh Whannell's direction provides a ton of eerie and stylish choices, and although it loses a steam a bit as it goes along, the ending still works in that it sends both our heroine and the audience out on a cathartic note (this is not a movie to see if you're looking for a fun night out away from all the drama out there in the real world). What makes this horror reimagining/remake succeed more than most do is the completely committed performance from its lead. You really couldn't ask for a better actress than Elisabeth Moss to play a role like this: she has to display a wide range of emotions so that we believe that everyone else in the movie would question her sanity despite knowing her innocence from the beginning, but we root for her throughout. It's a performance that would earn awards buzz if it wasn't trapped in such a genre-y movie. This gets under your skin and leaves an impression that is hard to shake in a way few horror movies do these days, and proves after the ghastly misfire that was 2017's failed MCU-style franchise starter The Mummy that there's still plenty of creative life to Universal's monsters with the right approach. B+

 

15 hours ago, baumer said:

And there is one HOLY SHIT moment in the film that made me gasp.  The scene in the restaurant where the sister is killed left me shocked.  I truly didn't see that coming.  Kind of left me horrified for a few minutes. 

Easily the most shocking movie death since the daughter getting decapitated in Hereditary. My packed theater screamed when that happened.

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

Hollow Man was a poor film, but it has a latent exciting idea in it.  The line I always remember paraphrased was "Imagine what you could do if you didn't havs to look in the mirror afterwards". And this movie takes advantage of that greatly, with some stunningly directed and tense scenes (the attic sequence ia a standout) and some excellent dynamics between those who llve the  central character but are afraid of her responses with Elizabeth Moss caught between fear and not wanting to appear paranoid. As a recovery and domestic violence movie it is excellent - one of the better scenes is before any Invisible Man shtick when Moss is trying to leave the house for the first time to pick up the post.

 

It isn't flawless, there are leaps of logic that every viewer has to make a choice whether they care about or not and mine ran out at "floating knife travels halfway across crowded restaurant without anyone noticing, nor does said large restaurant have cameras". The central death-faking which is skirted over very conveniently, the sister has a very sudden and unrealistically negative response to what would have surely been intepreted as a self-damaging email from a trauma victim, and there are more individual moments where its, again, just how much you care about physical logic. 

 

Largely a very good film though and a recommend for anyone.

 

Flat B for me.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Ipickthiswhiterose

[filmlover]

I'm pretty sure the person in the urn that contained "Adrian's" ashes was someone that he and his accomplice brother murdered and paid a nice sum of money to the coroner to identify the body as Adrian's so that part didn't seem too implausible to me. I just wanna know how Adrian was able to get everywhere without being detected. Does he also have an invisible car as well? 

[Frozen]

1 hour ago, filmlover said:

I'm pretty sure the person in the urn that contained "Adrian's" ashes was someone that he and his accomplice brother murdered and paid a nice sum of money to the coroner to identify the body as Adrian's so that part didn't seem too implausible to me. I just wanna know how Adrian was able to get everywhere without being detected. Does he also have an invisible car as well? 

If you kill yourself, the police investigate the death and have to determine it was in fact suicide and not murder. So they’d have had to pay off a lot of people in this scenario. They never explained any of it. They could have avoided all this by just saying he jumped off the cliff by his house into the ocean and it was caught on camera. He could easily manipulate a camera. And of course no body. 

[nghtvsn]

This was a decent horror film. I liked how the film started with that escape sequence. It was very suspenseful and thrilling. Moss played the role well with varying degrees of emotion throughout. The scenes where she begins to believe someone is either watching her or messing with her are well done and tense. I liked the family she was staying with. When the IM is revealed assaulting her in the kitchen I thought that whole sequence was extremely well done, exciting and scary. I was surprised by a couple moments in the film which was nice. It's a pretty decent but I do have to say that the film did lag at points and almost had me dozing off at one point before it picked up really fast towards the end. 

 

Grade - B

[filmlover]

21 hours ago, Frozen said:

If you kill yourself, the police investigate the death and have to determine it was in fact suicide and not murder. So they’d have had to pay off a lot of people in this scenario.

They're rich so who's to say they didn't?  The movie builds up Adrian as being Evil Incarnate with zero redeeming qualities (fucker even goes as far as punching a child to make Cecilia look crazy) so you're either on board with the whole thing from the beginning or you're not. Every single Hollywood-made "psycho from Hell" thriller (whether good or bad) of the last 30 years could easily be picked apart for ridiculous and convenient story choices but it's easy to gloss over here IMO because it doesn't take away from the effective filmmaking and raw performance from Moss.

[Kravetz]

I enjoyed this film, and knew that i would need to suspend disbelief with the whole invisible technology. I was watching this wondering how she can prove that there is an invisible person, she spilled powder on the floor, paint out of the attic, OR would her sister the cop friend,  and his daughter first lose faith in her. then we had one moment where she finds the cell phone in the attic. I thought to myself that I would send all those photos to the cop who can have evidence, caller ID, etc. But she didn't do it. From that point on I couldn't enjoy the film the same way. Seeing an invisible person take out all those security guards was well done, and the whole ending at the house was predictable. This film still gets a good word of mouth from me, and I look forward to seeing more invisible films. 

[K1stpierre]

I mean yeah, were there plot holes in this? Sure, absolutely (my god, towards the end of the movie where the jail scene was taking place, I literally was eye rolling and getting so annoyed at how over the top it was the entire time), however did it detract my enjoyment of the film? No, I very much was enthralled with the movie from start to finish. I think the biggest jump scares/thrills (as it wasn't necessarily a jump scare in the traditional terms) was the first and biggest being when she poured the paint on him and finally for the first time seeing she is not crazy. Sooooooo extremely well done there, I literally JUMPED off my seat at that. And of course the other being when he slashed the sister's throat in the restaurant, that wasn't so much jump worthy but more "wtf" and slick (of course, the big argument I literally said when it happened was yeah, he's invisible but he's not "untouchable". So you mean to tell me in that packed place that A). Not ONE person bumped into him, I mean he's not the biggest whipped dude in the world but in that suit he's a pretty big build, it seems weird that a waiter/waitress or a busier or hell even a patron wouldn't have bumped into him; and B). when the knife was in mid air before it struck, not one person would have seen it? Again, some would just negate it, but realistically I feel like a knife in mid air in a packed place like that would attract SOMONE's attention. I mean there was a table right next to them, if I was sitting there I DEF would have noticed an airborne knife 2 feet away from me). 

 

With that said, yes there are many flaws and many eyeballs, but hey I appreciate the story and what the director did here. Created huge fucking suspense (not just physically but mentally, the biggest for me to grapple was, was it all "real", or was it all in her mind? The film really made you guess a long time which it was, which I really loved). I'd give this an A, 8.8/10

[Joel M]

I guess anyone's suspension of disbelief may vary but to me all the logical plot holes people are complaining about sounds like Neil Degrasse Tyson nitpcking sci-fi movies levels of buzzkill. Not attacking anyone, I just find it a bit weird, I never watch movies that way. But to each his own.

 

Anyway I thought the movie was amazing. It got released here just a few days before theatres closed which is a shame because it's such a great crowdpleaser. It manages to be simultaneously a fresh original story and a fantastic update of a "franchise" almost as old as cinema itself. Even if it is explicitly about Gaslighting it never stops to overexplain itself and its themes, that's what I also loved about Whanell's previous movie. His style is lean and there's almost never any fat. The other thing I loved is that it's scary in a different way than most thrillers. There's sure a lot of tension in the "horror scenes" but what really got me was her mental breakdown because of the gaslighting. After my initial shock in the restaurant scene I literally yelled at the screen FUCK.THIS.GUY.

 

That's all on Elizabeth Moss who's amazing and carries the whole movie on her shoulders. Literally half of the runtime is her reacting to negative space and she absolutely sells it and puts you in her shoes. Great, great performance.

 

In conclusion wth Leigh Whanell? After this and Upgrade I'm perplexed it took him more than a decade after Saw to get behind the camera. The guy has some serious chops.

 

ps. the rich house near the beach reminded me a lot of the house in that early 90s domestic abuse thriller with Julia Roberts. It's probably not an intentional reference but that's the first thing that popped in my mind and I haven't thought about that movie for like the last 2 decades.

[nick64]

https://grabyourseat.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/the-invisible-man/

 

Can we get a round of applause for Universal? Following the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Universal was one of many studios who sought after their own cinematic universe with the Dark Universe, a world based on the Universal Classic Monsters. They had a plan, a cast, and too-high budgets, but after the critical and commercial failures of Dracula Untold and The Mummy, they stepped back and reconsidered. They dropped all of the overarching plans and decided to entrust the properties to low-budget experts Blumhouse Productions. For The Invisible Man, the first in this new franchise strategy, they hired writer-director Leigh Whannel, known for his work on Saw, Insidious, and Upgrade, and gave him a mere $7 million to work with. As a result, this Invisible Man is a much more focused film and a superior entry in both the horror world and the 2020 release calendar as a whole.

 

The Invisible Man is a modern take on H. G. Wells’s classic 19th century novel, with an all-new perspective. This version follows Cecelia “Cee” Kass (Elisabeth Moss), who just barely manages to escape from her abusive husband, Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). A few weeks later, it is announced that Adrian has committed suicide, and Cee finally starts to feel a sense of freedom. However, she soon starts to notice some mysterious things taking place around her. Her husband was a wealthy optics expert, so she comes to the conclusion that he has managed to turn himself invisible. Could it be, or is Cee just suffering from some post-traumatic hallucinations?

 

This is a really clever take on the concept of an invisible person, and it allows for some smart and careful commentary on timely issues. When abusers speak up, they are not always immediately believed. Maybe they’re just trying to get back at somebody? But when it’s true (and it usually is), the victim may feel trapped, with everyone doubting them and no proof to show that they really are telling the truth. This is how Cee feels when she tries to explain Adrian’s invisible. It’s understandable that the supporting cast doesn’t immediately believe her, but it’s frustrating at the same time. Cee feels alone, and you feel alone with her.

 

This type of story must be treated carefully, and Elisabeth Moss is a spectacular choice for the role. She plays Cee as a woman who has clearly suffered a lot, but still has agency and wants to get her life back on track. She sells the character in every regard, ranges from fierce intensity to meaningful subtlety, and succeeds in spades at carrying the film on her shoulders. The cast around her is excellent at well. Aldis Hodge and Storm Reid play her surrogate family, who clearly care a lot about her but struggle to believe her wild claims. Oliver Jackson-Cohen perfectly blends the necessary charm and evil of his character in his few visible scenes, and Harriet Dyer and Michael Dorman work well in the minor, but still important, roles of the siblings of the two main characters.

 

For as important Moss is to this film, it still would not work nearly as well without the support of writer-director Leigh Whannell at the helm. Whannell not only directs his cast to perfection, but truly knows how to build a chilling atmosphere for this story. His use of empty space, mixed with Benjamin Wallfisch’s excellent score, will make you wonder throughout the film if Adrian is around, just sitting in the corner waiting to attack. He brings the fear of the unknown to life and will have you on the edge of your seat throughout. Every scene is very carefully paced and staged. It’s slow at first, but picks up right when it needs to and doesn’t let go. The pacing fits the story it’s telling and wonderfully complements its themes. Whannell proves himself the right man for the job in the chilling scenes, the quiet scenes, and even the action scenes. Anyone who has seen the severely underrated Upgrade knows that the director is excellent at staging fight choreography on par with John Wick. Every movement is in frame, easily registered, and full of energy.

 

The Invisible Man does a lot to surprise you. There are a handful of twists that you will not see coming (Get it?). You also won’t see the jump scares coming, but they are executed in a way that so few films have managed over the years. The atmosphere that Whannell has built sells itself to these jump scares. They feel earned, rather than cheap. There are easter eggs and symbols throughout that not only make callbacks to other films, but help define characters and provide hints for future actions. Watch The Invisible Man with a close eye, because Whannell gives us so much to discover. But for as many goodies as there are scattered throughout the film, there are times when you look back at something and wonder how the logic makes sense. Why didn’t anyone use *blank*? They’re small flaws that might detract from some viewers’ experiences, but the overall package is still undeniably strong and a huge jump in the right direction for Universal’s horror lineup.

 

A

[avensis]

Invisible Man is an excellent film that lives up to my expectations !!! Everything is skillfully carried out: the scenario, the characters, the music, the general atmosphere of the film, etc ...

Edited December 14, 2020 by avensis