The Invisible Man (2020): Review by @Kush_Hayes
The 14th movie to use the name “The Invisible Man” exclusively in that order comes to us from the good people at Blumhouse. They definitely know how to stretch a dollar as well as the anticipation for a jump scare.
I dont know why this is called The Invisible Man. Feels like it could be called anything else and have the same impact on audiences with its message and its visuals. But its a Universal Film and they arent doing anything with the name like they thought they might be by 2020, so you might as well call it The Invisible Man.
We meet Cecila Kass, played by Elizabeth Moss, late one night in her beautiful ocean side manor thats fortified off from the world with its 12 ft high, 3ft thick walls. As revealed in the trailer and all the propaganda for this film, Cecila is being abused by her husband, Adrian. Thanks to her sister, she escapes and stays at a friends house who also happens to be a cop, played by Aldris Hodge. Hodges character does his best to deal with his guest for the month that shes been staying there, all while juggling a daughter who is making the rounds applying for college. Once we find out that Adrian has killed himself things start unraveling for the worse. Theres a small kitchen fire. Her sister receives a nasty email from Ceceilas account. Theres even an outburst that disrupts the house when Ceceila has an encounter with some bed sheets. Upon Adrians death he left her $5 million dollars with a small series of stipulations that no one is every really worried about. Ceceilas character has had no allusions to being schizophrenic or misc, so this whole breakdown of her sanity is a strange route to take. Of course things get worse as we tread on.
Husband is very wealthy as displayed by the location of the house, but never is it explained WHAT it is he does to acquire all that wealth. Hes even got a subterranean laboratory showing us briefly that hes been working on something. But it doesnt really tell us what hes accomplished. Aside of a throwaway line of “Hes a master of optics” (paraphrasing) we have no understanding of how all the supernatural events occurring in this film are taking place. In fact as I wrote all that out, its weird that this isnt a movie about a man posing as his own ghost. Maybe none of that is important in the long run, but its the only thing that was chipping away at me.
Everyone in this is very good. A fantastic exhibition of descending into madness from Elizabeth Moss. Aldis Hodge and Storm Reid play a fantastic Father-Daughter team whose relationship feels natural and makes you care about them as the stakes escalate. Leigh Wahnnell makes great use of space and his visual style seems to only be getting stronger, although I like what he did with Upgrade more, he ratchets up the tension in every scene and makes his use of jumpscares scarce and meaningful.
My biggest complaint is this movie has two endings. And I dont really like the second ending as I feel all the tension was released in the first ending 8 minutes earlier to a predictable but satisfactory conclusion. It feels like a “creative” note from Universal, but that may also just be wishful thinking.
Three out of Five Blueberries
Rated R for some strong bloody violence, and language
© 2020 The BosNet Family All Rights Reserved
