Review: The Invisible Man

Elisabeth Moss orchestrates an escape from her abusive and controlling partner Oliver Jackson-Cohen (forever to be known as ‘Not Jake Gyllenhaal’ in my book), with the help of her sister (Harriet Dyer, with a not terribly convincing American accent) and a cop friend (Aldis Hodge), who has a teenage daughter (Storm Reid). We then learn that Jackson-Cohen, a tech billionaire has supposedly committed suicide. However, it’s not long before Moss starts to sense Jackson-Cohen’s malevolent presence hasn’t left, and is haunting her. Everyone else thinks she’s crazy. But is she? Have you looked at the title? Michael Dorman plays Jackson-Cohen’s estranged brother, a lawyer.

 

Former “Recovery” film critic Leigh Whannell (known internationally as the writer and co-star of “Saw” and the rather more enjoyable “Insidious” films) has the same fanboy encyclopaedic knowledge of film as Quentin Tarantino (and myself for that matter). As the writer-director of this #MeToo update of H.G. Wells’ basic concept, he shows at least one very big difference to Mr. Tarantino: Tarantino happens to be a very fine writer-director, whereas Mr. Whannell simply loves a lot of movies and likes to show us that he loves lots of movies. That’s cool, but a good film it does not maketh.

 

It’s a shame because although I initially thought this was gonna be another “Hollow Man”, the more I thought about it, the more I thought a retelling of Wells’ tale for the #MeToo era had a fair bit of promise. Although Elisabeth Moss is starting to get a tad typecast as an abused woman scorned, you could easily see how she’d be perfect for this concept. Whannell just isn’t the right guy for the job. The script is derivative of the highly underrated “Sleeping With the Enemy” in the first half, and Whannell’s directorial bag of tricks offered up primarily in the second half is dull, limited, and derivative too. The first half isn’t too bad (though the character relationships are quite poorly explained), but that second half had me twiddling my thumbs quite a bit as Whannell gives us exactly what you expect exactly when you expect it, at least 98% of the time. When the script finally offers up a couple of twists I didn’t see coming, the second one in particular I’m not sure is very helpful to the film’s overall #MeToo aesthetic. So even when Whannell goes outside of the horror clichés, he still doesn’t pull it off. Worst of all, the title character is invisible for far too much of the film (you don’t really see him for at least 90 minutes), not to mention inaudible for almost as much. I’m pretty sure Claude Rains was rather chatty in the 1930s version, and Chevy Chase certainly was in the underrated “Memoirs of an Invisible Man”.

 

Getting back to the “Sleeping With the Enemy” connection, Patrick Bergin was certainly on screen for quite a bit of the film, the film worked because he and Julia Roberts (in her best performance to date) were both strong presences on screen. Giving us a villain who isn’t a visible or audible threat, and who operates entirely in horror jump scare clichés was a massive mistake. Frankly, I think trying to associate this story with Wells at all was probably a mistake, too. That first twist was pretty nifty even though I should’ve picked it, and there’s an earlier bit at a restaurant that is hilariously brilliant. It’s clever, but also it’s a death that is both surprising and a bit sad because we like both Moss and the victim in that scene. Still, for the most part this one’s pretty blah. Jump scares are the laziest thing a horror director can go to, and you feel there was a chance for something genuinely good here that has been wasted by a miscast writer-director. Despite technically being a horror film, this movie did not need a jump scare horror journeyman with a fanboy streak at the helm. I liked the first two “Insidious” films just fine, and even my favourite horror film “The Omen” had a couple of (great) jump scares. This film didn’t need that though. This film needed a real filmmaker, someone with a better grasp of drama, character, tension, and atmosphere. Sophistication and a little ambition, even. For crying out loud, if you need to go to the jump scare well, can you a) Only do it on occasion, and b) Try doing it on an ‘off’ beat, instead of the exact moment every horror director chooses. Hell, have the menace pop out from the foreground instead of the background. Something. Try something different. Anything. The camerawork is nice, though the lighting is extremely murky which is a real shame.

 

The basic idea and central character are worthy in this update of the H.G. Wells novel. Elisabeth Moss needs to start adding more strings to her bow, but is nonetheless well typecast as the battered wife. Unfortunately, instead of a smart update of Wells’ novel, writer-director Whannell gives us “Sleeping With the Enemy” with more jump scares and clichés (and a touch of “Gaslight”), and an almost entirely off-screen villain. It never really satisfies as a result, it’s also completely unnecessary to call it “The Invisible Man”, as it’s a very different story to Wells’. Clunky and clichéd, though a couple of the attack scenes do have an effective discomfort about them despite the jump scare tedium.

 

Rating: C-