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The Invisible Man

Posted on September 17, 2020

Is The Invisible Man What It Seems?

Guest Post

Based on the 1897 H. G. Wells novel, The Invisible Man (2020), written and directed by Leigh Whannell, involves a woman who believes she is being stalked by her now invisible wealthy ex-boyfriend following his suicide. However, things may not be as they seem in this modern tale of trauma and psychological terror.

On the surface the film’s synopsis sees Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) leave violent boyfriend Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and subsequently suffer the traumatic after-effects of a violently abusive relationship. She goes to stay with childhood friend Detective James Lanier (Aldi Hodge) and his daughter Sydney (Storm Reid) to make a fresh start. But it does not end there: even after Adrian’s supposed suicide, Cecilia believes she is being hunted by an invisible Adrian, and she struggles to convince her friends and family of her unseen torment. After suffering further at the hands of the invisible man, Cecilia is eventually admitted to a mental hospital following her sister Emily’s (Harriet Dyer) murder in a restaurant; Cecilia claims she is being framed for the murder by the invisible man. She manages to escape the hospital after confronting her unseen attacker, but he takes the fight to her friend James’s house. After Cecilia shoots the invisible man, he is unveiled as Adrian’s lawyer brother, Tom (Michael Dorman), and Adrian is discovered imprisoned in his home. Not convinced it was Tom taunting her, Cecilia arrives to have dinner and ends up adopting the invisible suit herself and murdering Adrian, making it appear to be suicide. Cecilia is free at last.

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Posted on February 28, 2020

The Invisible Man – But His Victim Steals the Show

Guest Post

The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell, 2020) was almost a very different movie. When Universal’s Dark Universe was still a possibility, the plan was to have Johnny Depp star as the unseen entity and overlap it Marvel-style with movies like Tom Cruise’s The Mummy. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Dark Universe producer and The Mummy director Alex Kurtzman explained that Universal’s original monster movies were “beautiful because the monsters are broken characters, and we see ourselves in them” (Goldberg). It is likely that, with Depp starring and driven by this idea of the monsters as beautiful broken characters, The Invisible Man we almost got would have centered on the scientist who discovers a way to make himself invisible only to find it damaging to his mental stability.

There’s nothing wrong with that story. We’ve seen plenty of examples of it, from the original Universal version of The Invisible Man in 1933 to the sleazy Hollow Man in 2000, starring Kevin Bacon and directed by Paul Verhoeven. It is, however, a version of the story that we are very familiar with: A man’s ability to exist unseen enables him to enact his base desires. Even though he becomes the villain, it is only after audiences identify with him as the protagonist that his peeping tom (or worse) side comes out. Although Alex Kurtzman may see this shift as exposing man’s beautiful brokenness, and may indeed see some of himself in such a character, it is a story that ultimately asks audiences to understand how taboo desires and lack of accountability might lead a man to do what he was unable to do when he was visible. I’m tired of that story, and, luckily, writer-director Leigh Whannell was tired of it too. Read more

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