by Conan Simmons – September 20, 2020 – 6:15 am
After several attempts at rebooting their famous monsters as action-adventure characters in flops such as ‘Dracula: Untold’ and ‘The Mummy’ starring Tom Cruise (essentially Mission: Impossible with a monster), Universal finally gets it right by trusting popular genre studio Blumhouse Productions to take over and craft a well told tale of horror using the maniacal menace ‘The Invisible Man’.
Taking only the title and the idea of an invisible murderer from the classic H.G. Wells novel, writer-director Leigh Whannell creates a tense story capturing the zeitgeist of today’s society.
Elisabeth Moss stars as Cecilia Kass, a woman who escapes from her very abusive and rich, inventor boyfriend who lives in a high tech compound. Taking shelter with a police officer friend and his college bound daughter, played by Aldis Hodge and Storm Reid, Cecilia is near paralyzed with paranoia. It’s not too long before she receives word that her abuser is dead. He leaves $5 million for her in his will, when being read the will by the lawyer, who creepily is her abuser’s brother, she accepts the money.
Strange things start to happen subtly at first but when Cecilia discovers that she was drugged at a job interview she begins to suspect her deceased abuser is still alive. Naturally, no one believes her as she becomes increasingly manic. The gaslighting continues until she is accused of hitting her friends daughter. Unable to get help from her sister (Harriet Dyer), Cecilia goes down the rabbit hole of madness under constant torment from her invisible stalker.
Filmed in New South Wales, Australia doubling for the San Francisco bay area, ‘The Invisible Man’ is arguably the most successful film of 2020 thus far. It was released before the Covid-19 pandemic shut everything down and was a box office hit.
Leigh Whannell’s directing keeps everything on track. Elisabeth Moss gives a performance that helps you overlook any flaws with the film itself and will undoubtedly be in the top of her filmography for years to come. Her portrayal of a victim falling into a false-insanity and then reclaiming her life shows that quality acting really does have a place in the horror genre.
The supporting cast all turn in solid performances, including Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Michael Dorman as the invisible abuser and his creepy lawyer brother.
The cinematography was a little too dark at times and there were a couple of moments that near-missed veering into silliness. The scares were on the predictable side yet entertainingly executed. This is a movie that works best the less you think about it.
The music score by Benjamin Wallfisch is a standout giving a modern update to a sound that really takes you back to the golden age of Universal horror.
James Whale’s 1933 adaptation of HG Wells’ famed novel remains the definitive version of the monster. This new 2020 take comes in a close second outdoing all other variations in between.
Genre fans may be excited to know that writer-director Leigh Whannell is riding the success of this picture into talks of directing Ryan Gosling in a remake of ‘The Wolfman’. He may also be helming a remake of ‘Escape from New York’ that is currently in development.