After a day of hard work / posting I had nothing to watch so decided to jump into The Invisible Man 2020, a movie that I also have been holding for a very long time and I gotta tell you this movie blew my mind in ways I wasn't expecting, to be clear not the best horror movie I have ever seen but for what it is I really enjoy it. Who would have thought that the secret to making a good Universal Monsters movie was just making a damn horror film, during the time after all those big budget flops like Dracula Untold and that Tom Cruise Mummy disaster someone finally got it right. Leigh Whannell took this classic monster story and turned it into something very terrifying for a more modern audience and I really though simple things like smile or just stearing at you were simple but very effective horror movie strategies and I'm all for it. The movie story is based on a woman trying to escape her abusive, controlling boyfriend and after his "apparent" suicide, she starts getting tormented by someone she can't see.
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It's such a simple concept but executed so well that it keeps your imagination going wild trying to figure out if its just her going crazy or something is haunting her, Cecilia who's trying to rebuild her life after escaping her abusive tech genius boyfriend Adrian but she can't shake the feeling that he is somehow still watching her, even after he supposedly killed himself the paranoia builds slowly at first with little things going wrong, the causal thigs that happen when there is something else haunting you like a pan left on the stove, footsteps in the night, items disappearing and you start to wonder if she's losing her mind or if something more sinister is happening. What might make the movie interesting for part of the audience could be the same that throws off others and its the fact of including tech to make a horror movie, instead of some mad scientist drinking a potion we get a believable tech explanation with a suit covered in tiny cameras that bend light around it and the way they use this invisibility in the movie is creepy although the moment the cat is out of the box the script kinda takes a nose dive its like the magic is over, there are scenes where the camera just slowly pans to empty corners of rooms or hallways and lingers there, making you search the frame for any hint of movement or distortion, a kind of subtle horror that keeps you on waiting.
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Elisabeth Moss absolutely carries this movie on her shoulders and she deserves all the credit for it, from the way she play the role of this woman who's been through trauma and is trying to convince everyone she's not crazy while fighting an enemy no one else can see, she has to react to nothing for most of the movie and I can only imagine how hard that can be because there is nothing to react to, fighting with thin air and looking terrified at empty spaces and she sells every second of it. The supporting cast is good too, especially Aldis Hodge as her friend James who takes her in but this is Moss's show all the way. What really impressed me about the movie is how director Leigh Whannell builds tension throughout the movie, there's this amazing sequence at the beginning where Cecilia is escaping from Adrian's house that has almost no dialogue but tells you everything you need to know about their relationship and how dangerous this guy is, the way the camera moves through that fancy glass house on the cliff showing how isolated and trapped she feels what a way to generate tension and emotions without anyone saying anything and then there are these fight scenes later in the movie where she's battling someone she can't see and the entire chorograph scene is build up in such a clever way that you feel every hit even though you can only see one person, there is also the sound work for example with this subtle whirring noise whenever the invisible suit is active that becomes this terrifying backdrop audio that something bad is about to happen make you feel as uneasy as the main character.
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To put in perspective this kind of movie are not easy to pull off at all just like movies with tight spaces and little amount of characters, its a very similar situation, it's also a brilliant examination of abusive relationships and gaslighting. The way Adrian torments Cecilia by making her doubt her own thoughs, isolating her from friends and family, and making everyone think she is crazy is honestly trying to understand the reasons and how Adian brain works during this moments is more terrifying than any monster its almost like the monster that never dies and keeps giving, this movie takes that classic monster story and turns it into a metaphor for the kind of abuse that often goes unseen by others, and it works on both ways, as a straight up horror thriler and as something deeper, there are some shocking moments during the movie especially the one scene in a restaurant where in a desperate attempt for having someone believe her, Cecilia meet her sister and just before she could finish convince her of Adrian using the suit he takes a knife cuts Cecilia's sister throat and then frame Cecilia by putting the bloody knife on ther hands.
I also appreciated that Whannell didn't feel the need to explain everything or give us some long villain monologue, he trusts the audience to put the pieces together and that makes the whole experience more engaging. The movie isn't perfect as I mention above, there are a few logic issues here and there that made me question how quickly the invisible man could move around or how he always seemed to know where Cecilia would be, the movie is very effective at building tension and creating scares that these minor issues didn't really matter to me at the moment, what matters is that this movie had me very entertained from the start, I think if I had the chance I would watch it on a theater.
In conclusion, The Invisible Man proves that you don't need a massive budget or a shared universe to make these classic monster stories work for modern audiences, all you need is a talented director with a talent to generate tension out of thin air LITERALLY!!!, a great lead performance and ways to make something that might be totally normal become very traumatic and scary. Leigh Whannell took a 7 million dollar budget and created something more effective than movies that cost 20 times as much and but we all know big production companies never learn from their errors or try to lift up this rough gems, I have seen some other movies from him like Insidious franchise with Patric Wilson, I love this movies and very recently Wolf Man that I end up liking but not as much as I enjoy The Invisible Man. If you're a fan of smart, tense thrillers or just someone who appreciates when a classic story gets a fresh update that actually works, then this movie is totally worth watching, it's easily one of the best horror movies I have seen from the psychological stand point and proof that sometimes the scariest monsters are the ones we can't see, whether they're literally invisible or just using a high tech suit liiike Adrian.
