#TimesUp for The Invisible Man

It's pretty shocking that The Invisible Man turned out the way it did.

A remake of the 1933 horror classic/adaptation of H.G Wells' sci-fi novel of the same name, most recently attempted by Paul Verhoeven back in 2000 with Kevin Bacon, 2020's The Invisible Man began life as a planned installment in Universal's Dark Universe, starring Johnny Depp.

It's original purpose was to service a broader Cinematic Universe ™, with lead-ins for additional spin-offs such as The Invisible Woman and which could tie into other films in the canon ala Marvel Studios. The series of action horror hybrids were to be spearheaded by Tom Cruise's The Mummy back in 2016 and if you one of the poor unfortunate souls who saw that movie, let alone its trailer - which got released with the wrong audio mix first time round -, you'd know that fate was clearly not on their side.

With the underwhelming financial and critical response to their very first instalment, the studio then put forward a new mandate to emphasize distinctive, self-contained storytelling over serialized sequel-baiting, something we've all been suggesting they do for years but hey, money talks. Whatever.

The film now streaming to your TV set because your local cinema is closed has been reworked with the help of Blumhouse Pictures and director/writer Leigh Whannell of Upgrade fame, and is really quite good!

Tense, reserved, well-acted and fairly thematically poignant, I'd put it on perhaps the same level as maybe a fondly-remembered-but-not-all-that-iconic 80s horror thriller. The performances and circumstances do well to support the audience's empathy, and the stripping back of the film's ambitions may well have been for the better, as it allows for focuses that propel the material beyond what it might have been otherwise.

Among other things, from a purely visceral perspective, The Invisible Man mostly excels by invoking the same rule of thumb that Robocop coined back in 1987: make you really hate the villain and root for the protagonist to kill that mother fucker! It does so through a sympathetic and well-cast lead performance by Elizabeth Moss and a shifting of perspectives.

Our latest adaptation sees the events through the eyes of the victim. The film sees Moss' Cecilia plagued by strange occurrences after the sudden suicide of her abusive boyfriend Adrian after she manages to leave him.

And given that subject matter, it's probably for the best that Depp was promptly set aside for the more interesting casting of Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who's really good in the few scenes we get of him here.

Anyone that knows me knows that I have a real fondness for flicks that seamlessly marry quality genre shenanigans with relevant social commentary. I rather enjoy the way Knives Out starts as a subversive play on the anachronistic Agatha Christie throwback to develop into this contemporary fantasy of postmodern America. The Invisible Man wants to do the same thing but for the #MeToo movement.

In a tweet, I described this particular version's premise as "What if Harvey Weinstien had an invisibility suit" and that is effectively what Whannell is channeling here. Framing the story from the perspective of Cecilia, the victim of The Invisible Man's torment, abuse and gas-lighting, gives the material a more contemporary spin. The possibly of our main antagonist being her old controlling and violent boyfriend, who by the way just so happens to be a well-respected and renowned optics engineer and wealthy businessman, recontextualizes the story with the thematic real-world horror of dangerous men with the sort of power that affords them a kind of invisibility in real life.

The approach feels so tasteful and authentic that I was quite surprised this wasn't helmed by a female director, but that's a whole other discussion for another time.

Whannell clearly knows what he's doing now having contributed to writing films like Saw, the Insidious movies and writing directing last year's surprisingly well executed Upgrade, a kind of Venom-esque action thriller where a paraplegic allows his body to become enhanced with an AI in order to seek revenge, and so it's no surprise that the horror thriller sequences here are tastefully reserved, sporting a fun suspense that keeps the film moving at an entertaining pace. There's a slow burn putting-the-pieces-together scene in an attic followed by a fun one take, both of which make great use of the sets, there's a creepy night-time sequence of the Invisible Man literally just messing with Cecilia, which sports really convincing visual effects work, and a fair few visceral shocks that are both deeply unsettling and that raise the stakes further.

The film might be a little more impressive for its thematic ambition and technical filmmaking prowess than its plot logic. By the time the Invisible Man starts making his actions explicit, he appears to have also developed heightened strength which is never really explained. This was probably one of those things where it's just more visually interesting to see Elizabeth Moss thrown across a table than it is to see her pushed to the floor in a more realistic manor, but it is still something you notice due to the disconnect to the reality elsewhere.

There's also a resolution of sorts towards the end that just seems a little too easy, just in terms of what's happened so far and what we know of the world of the film. But by that point the movie's opting for a focus on character and connotation than it is plot logic, so if you're the kind of person who didn't like A Quiet Place once you actually started thinking about it, that might bother you. Thankfully the last scene is so good you kinda just choose not to care.

Sometimes it's ok to just be a pretty good flick, and I found The Invisible Man genuinely enjoyable and rather tastefully done. Made on a more modest budget of $7 million to gross about $100 worldwide, a stark contrast to how they did The Mummy, the film acts as a far stronger foundation to build a series upon, and a refreshing example of how best to remake a classic story; you really don't have to put ridiculous amounts of money behind it. All you need is an already marketable IP, a good cast, a decent script, and faith in a slightly different approach.

THE END.

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