Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
The Invisible Man (2020)
H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel The Invisible Man has inspired many movies. Neat trick in a visual medium—an invisible antagonist! The idea conveyed by the power—and malice—of an unseen villain challenged special effects artists and captivated the imagination of screenwriters and audiences alike.
In the new version of The Invisible Man, the antagonist is Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a high-tech wizard who abuses his wife Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) physically and psychologically. One night, she drugs him, slips out of his walled mansion north of San Francisco and is spirited to freedom by her sister, Alice (Harriet Dyer), who meets her on the road nearby. Adrian’s suicide is announced and his brother Tom (Michael Dorman), the executor of his estate, reveals that Cecelia will receive $100,000 each month—unless she is charged with a crime or declared mentally incompetent. Sign here, Tom says; but that’s not the end of Adrian.
Soon enough, Cecelia has the creepy feeling that her husband is still alive and around. Well, there is the unexplained depression on the chair cushion, the odd stovetop fire and the front door ajar in the house of her childhood friend, James (Aldis Hodge), where she has taken refuge. Does anyone believe her?
Moss’s superb performance as an abused woman, damaged yet determined, is one reason The Invisible Man works as well as it does (Adrian is virtually invisible until near the end). The other is writer-director Leigh Whannell’s screenplay, which capitalizes on contemporary anxieties. The situation of women cruelly used by narcissistic, sociopathic men is just for starters. The Invisible Man is a tale of stalking and trolling.
More so than in H.G. Wells’ time, people have reason to fear that their lives are being tracked and manipulated by unseen forces. The screen on Cecelia’s laptop, before her tormentor manifests himself, is open to a headline: “Are You Being Watched? Here’s how prying eyes can hack your webcam.” She covers the camera, but it’s no use. Adrian will hack her email account and send Alice a message from that address, saying she wished her sister was dead. It’s a set up for the violence to come.
The paranoid mood of The Invisible Man extends to the voyeuristic cinematography, which allows the viewer to experience Cecilia’s suspicion of being watched. Whannell also deploys sounds acutely. The rustle of dead leaves and the clock of a lock add to the mounting sense of dread. After all, sounds are invisible, even if their sources can be seen.
That tense expectation present from the opening scene builds until it finally erupts into madness. Everyone has good reason to think Cecilia is crazy and to assume it’s the post-traumatic stress of an awful marriage rather than the unseen hand of an awful husband. Given Whannell’s track record, which includes the nasty bloodletting of Saw, it’s no shock that the story explodes into mayhem as it veers from one perverse twist to another.
Cinema buffs will recognize several allusions to the classic era of horror films launched in the 1930s by The Invisible Man’s studio, Universal. Adrian’s coldly geometric modern mansion on the hill (complete with laboratory) is reminiscent of Boris Karloff’s dwelling in The Black Cat, and the bandaged face glimpsed in a hospital ward is a nod to Claude Rains’ (visible) appearance in the 1933 version of The Invisible Man.
