The Invisible Man (2020)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on March 6, 2020.

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Leigh Whannell.

Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Harriet Dyer, Michael Dorman, Oliver Jackson-Cohen.

My Kitchen Rules had taken a dark turn.

Hollywood works in mysterious ways. For example, it's thanks to Tom Cruise's The Mummy (2017) being a bit crap that we have this pretty good update of The Invisibile Man.

The Mummy was destined to be the beginning of Universal's Dark Universe, which would have set up a shared cinematic universe for the Invisible Man, Frankenstein's Monster and Bride, the Creature From The Black Lagoon and more. Johnny Depp was even signed on to star in The Invisible Man. But The Mummy crumbled with the critics and bit the dust at the box office, and Universal wisely put that idea back in the crypt.

Then someone knocked on Saw co-creator Leigh Whannell's door, and as a result, we have a clever modern spin on HG Wells' late-19th-century sci-fi novel. By teaming with Moss (who reportedly helped develop the character and fine-tune the script with Whannell), he has made a memorable if imperfect frightener that recasts the story as a harrowing domestic violence horror.

Moss is Cecilia, an abuse survivor who flees her increasingly controlling partner Adrian (Jackson-Cohen). When Adrian turns up dead from an apparent suicide soon after, Cecilia thinks she is finally free of her psychotic ex. But strange occurrences lead her to suspect that Adrian isn't dead, and that his research into optics has borne fruit in the form on an invisibility suit. Will anyone believe that she's being haunted by an invisible man?

The Invisible Man's neatest trick is spinning its story to focus on the titular character's victim. It makes the film truly scary, while allowing it to serve as a metaphor for abusive relationships and the impacts abusers have on their partners, even long after separation.

Moss is electrifying in the central role, running through fragility, shock, fear, mania, determination, and ultimately strength. It's a full-blooded performance that hits every note perfectly. This film would not have worked as well as it does without a turn like Moss' and she deserves all the plaudits she can get.

She's ably supported by Hodge, Dyer and Dorman, but the other big star is screenwriter-director Whannell, who ratchets up the fear and action as the story progresses across its almost-too-long runtime of two hours. His screenplay is delicately balanced, slowly and adroitly tilting into horror territory at just the right point. His direction is deft too, not relying on jump scares and pulling out almost as much adrenaline from shots of empty chairs and doorways. Whannell seems fully aware that sometimes what you can't see is the scariest thing of all, and uses this idea to full effect.

Some elements of the plot don't hold up to much analysis, and overthinking the machinations of the antagonist has a bit of a house-of-cards effect, but in the moment none of this matters. The Invisible Man is scary in a largely goreless way, but more importantly it's a whipsmart update of an old story that has some salient and important things to see about domestic violence.