The Invisible Man Review

We’re just beginning the third month of the year and there have already been… wait for it… eight horror movies released in theaters. And of the eight, “The Invisible Man” is the first one I have saw. Of the other seven, we’ve had “The Grudge,” “Underwater,” “The Turning,” “Gretel & Hansel,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Lodge” and “Brahms: The Boy II.” I saw “The Lodge” a day after seeing “The Invisible Man” and that review is coming soon. It was a Sundance horror film from 2019 that had been waiting over a year for and was finally released. I enjoyed “The Boy,” so I am curious about what the heck they’re doing with “The Boy II.” And “Underwater” I hear was fairly decent, so I might check that one out eventually when it hits streaming. The other four I have little interest in. But “The Invisible Man” is the first major horror film that made a significant impact at the box office last weekend. It’s also based on source material that is well over 100 years old as H.G. Wells’ original novel was published in 1897. The title character was then brought in as one of Universal’s classic monsters in 1933 and has been a staple in monster lore and cinema ever since, right alongside the likes of Dracula and Frankenstein. The number of movies he’s appeared in is quite the long list.

This current adaptation of “The Invisible Man” has been in production as early as 2007. Production kicked into gear in the mid 2010s when Universal had the idea to reboot their classic monsters in a shared universe they called the Dark Universe. Said Dark Universe lasted approximately one movie following the financial and critical disaster that was the 2017 Tom Cruise remake of “The Mummy,” which is a movie that I personally didn’t hate. There were some interesting pieces in place and I liked Sofia Boutella’s Mummy portrayal. The problem is that the movie spent so much time setting of the Dark Universe that they forgot to stop and make a good individual movie. Every studio is trying so hard to copy “The Avengers” that they forget that Marvel began by simply making “Iron Man,” “Thor” and “Captain America” as individual movies before later bringing them together in 2012. The process shouldn’t be rushed. In order to make people care about a cinematic universe, people first need to be emotionally invested in the individual players. Hence is why the Dark Universe crashed and burned. However, during this aftermath, Jasom Blum decided he wanted to still make “The Invisible Man” as an individual movie not connected to any sort of cinematic universe.

And thus we have this current Leigh Whannell directed remake of the popular story, produced by Blumhouse and distributed by Universal, with a production budget of just $7 million, which is why its $28 million opening was a huge success. Compare that to 2017’s “The Mummy,” which opened a tad bit higher at $31 million, yet was a disaster because it had a production budget in the range of $125-195 million. It did make up ground overseas with a worldwide total of $410 million, but the $80.2 million domestic total was just not enough for Universal to move forward with the Dark Universe. Quite frankly, if Universal wanted to create a new cinematic monsterverse, focusing first on individual movies that don’t have gigantic budgets is exactly how they should’ve gone. Because I like the idea of doing modern takes on old monster movies. The execution just needs to be there, which is why I really enjoyed this remake of “The Invisible Man.” Leigh Whannell was definitely the right man for the job. Not only did he have plenty of experience with the horror genre as he helped write movies like “Saw” and “Insidious,” but he also showed off his directing prowess with the 2018 film “Upgrade,” a movie that I never reviewed on this blog, but one that I really enjoyed.

What makes "The Invisible Man" so effective is that it manages to get under your skin and becomes quite unsettling in a very unique way. The movie follows a girl with a psychotic and abusive boyfriend who does not take kindly to her finally running away. He tries to chase her down, but she just barely escapes his grasp and hides with a friend of her's. She becomes paranoid and basically lives like a hermit for an extended period of time, only to finally start gaining peace and comfort when news comes out that he has committed suicide. But given that everyone should've seen the title of the movie when they walked into the theaters, and most likely also watched trailers, we all know that he didn't actually commit suicide. He simply faked his death and found a way to become invisible. Not via a failed science experiment, but some sort of optic technology that he was working on. And because the world thinks he committed suicide, he becomes invisible both literally and in terms of his status in the world. And now when he finds his former girlfriend and starts slowly ruining her life, she's the one who everyone thinks is going crazy. And it's actually pretty tragic because the second she starts to get better is when he shows up and ruins everything.

In terms of the horror elements, this movie is quite genius. It doesn't rely on jump scares and loud noises to try to scare people. In fact, it's quite the opposite. This movie is slow and quiet, but it's those quiet moments that become extremely uncomfortable because the guy shows himself fairly early, then disappears. Thus we as an audience know something is up even before the girl does. Because of that, we spend every scene trying to figure out where exactly he's standing and when he's going to strike. Or is he going to awkwardly watch her sleep or disturbingly watch her take a shower? Thus very normal scenes that would otherwise be quite boring become super intense as the audience is dying in anticipation of something terrible on the horizon. It's also quite genius in terms of the budget. They didn't have to spend anything on fancy visual effects, scary monsters, or elaborate makeup work. The monster literally doesn't exist. Most of the craft involves fancy camerawork as the camera pans around or focuses in on a certain spot, thus cluing in the audience that he is probably standing right there. Then the camera plays mind tricks on the audience as it zooms out, making the audience guess where he is. We often don't know if she's about to get attacked.

Not only is this extremely intense and wildly entertaining if you are a horror fan, but as I eluded to before, this movie has a surprising amount of emotion. Despite this girl going through a horribly traumatic experience with an abusive relationship, she has a good support group and several great relationships. The acting across the board with the movie's visible characters is excellent and you're rooting for this girl to succeed. But then the invisible man shows up. We see him. She sees him. But no one else does. Thus when she tries to go to her friends and explain what's going on, they all think she is crazy because this is not some sort of fantasy world. It's a modern, realistic portrayal of a guy who created the technology to become invisible without anyone knowing. Because of this, these solid relationships start to slowly deteriorate due to what's going on. Things that the guy is actually doing get blamed on the girl because that's the only logical explanation. The domino effect here becomes the most damaging to the girl, who is slowly starting to lose her grasp of her mental state and spiral psychologically out of control. You can tell based on the chain of events happening that she is about to completely break down.

As I referred to in the opening of this review, there is a large amount of horror films thrown our way, mostly because they are so cheap to make and easy for studios to make a quick buck. Because of that, a large majority of them are lazily put together, generic pieces of trash. I know I haven't seen a whole lot of the ones that have already come out this year, but based on reviews from critics and audiences alike, the majority of them are horror films that fall into these lazy tropes, which makes it refreshing when a horror movie comes around in "The Invisible Man" that, not only is out to do something unique and different, but a lot of care is put into the craft to truly make it something that stands out. In many ways this reminds me of "A Quiet Place" from the other year in that both movies are unique horror experiences (yes, I consider both as horror films, not thrillers) that use a lot of technical craft to present the movie's scares while also making sure to have a solid foundation of solid acting, character progression, and human emotion rather than relying on cheap scares and gory images. This is also a great example of a remake that justifies it's existence as something unique and different than it's predecessor. Instead of retreading old ground, they made something new.

If you're a horror fan and you're looking for something good to satisfy your needs, "The Invisible Man" is definitely a movie that you need to see. But also, if you are one that claims you hate horror, this is the type of horror film that you actually might enjoy as I believe this will be a movie that will do a good job of expanding beyond the typical horror crowd. I can see a lot of people that will claim that this is a thriller, not a horror, and say they enjoyed it because of that despite them usually not liking horror. That's a comment that usually bugs me because there's a lot of people out there, in my opinion, who probably like the horror genre a lot more than they will allow themselves to internally accept. But it's whatever. Regardless of what you decide to call it, if you like horror and/or thriller, this is a must see. No, it's not on the same level of some of the independent horror films that I love, but it didn't need to be. Again, like "A Quiet Place," this is an excellent horror film made for mainstream audiences. It didn't need to be super deep and thought-provoking. It's just an excellently done, well-crafted, mainstream horror film. If Universal or Blumhouse decide to do more classic monster films this way, I'm 100 percent on board. MY grade for "The Invisible Man" is a 9/10.