THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

the INVISIBLE MAN (2020) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   124 minutes

Released         |   27 February  2020

cast

Elisabeth Moss ... Cecilia Kass
Aldis Hodge ... James
Oliver Jackson-Cohen ... Adrian Griffin
Storm Reid ... Sydney
​Amali Golden ... Annie

director

Leigh Whannell

writer

​H.G. Wells ... (novel)
Leigh Whannell ... (written by)

cinematographer

​Stefan Duscio

music

Benjamin Wallfisch​

film editor

​Andy Canny

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box office result

Worldwide               $50 million

Australia                 $? million

North America        $? million

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movie minutiae

Originally part of Universal's now defunct Dark Universe, this was originally supposed to star Johnny Depp, but the series (which included Russell Crowe's JEKYLL AND HYDE, and Javier Bardem's FRANKENSTEIN) was seemingly called off after the box office and critical failure of THE MUMMY (2017).

Development of a new Invisible Man film began as early as 2007, when David S. Goyer was hired to write the screenplay. The project was announced to be revived as part of Universal's shared cinematic universe in 2016, intended to consist of their classic monsters, with Johnny Depp cast as the titular role in the film, with Ed Solomon writing the screenplay. However, once THE MUMMY (2017) was released with negative critical reception and box office returns that were deemed by the studio as less-than-expect, the studio halted all projects in development. Once the studio reconfigured their plans going forward to be individualied story-telling, the project reentered development. The project was announced to be a co-production between Blumhouse Productions, Nervous Tick, and Goalpost Pictures, while Universal Pictures serves as distributor. Whannell serves as director and writer. Filming began in July 2019 and wrapped in September 2019 in Sydney, Australia.

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THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) MOVIE IMAGES

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THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) STORY SYNOPSIS

​What you can’t see can hurt you. Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss (US, THE HANDMAID'S TALE) stars in a terrifying modern tale of obsession inspired by Universal’s classic monster character. 

Trapped in a violent, controlling relationship with a wealthy and brilliant scientist, Cecilia Kass (Moss) escapes in the dead of night and disappears into hiding, aided by her sister, their childhood friend and his teenage daughter.

But when Cecilia’s abusive ex commits suicide and leaves her a generous portion of his vast fortune, Cecilia suspects his death was a hoax. As a series of eerie coincidences turns lethal, threatening the lives of those she loves, Cecilia’s sanity begins to unravel as she desperately tries to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.

THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 27 February 2020

Pop ​Movee Rating

Australian hyphenate filmmaker Leigh Whannell successfully delivers a tightly scripted, innovatively shot, left-field take on a classic tale with his latest movie, THE INVISIBLE MAN.

Whannell jettisons the traditional “weird science” version of H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel (along with the multiple filmed versions that have arrived in cinemas throughout the years), updating the story to focus on the terror “The Invisible Man” inflicts upon his estranged wife who has escaped his controlling, manipulative behaviour.

The success of this latest version can be attributed to many things…

Good writing.
Good performances.
Great set-action pieces.
Inventive cinematography.
Wonderful music score.

Perhaps the best thing about THE INVISIBLE MAN is that Whannell’s script overcomes the original story’s in-built deus-ex-machina by making the titular character invisible through use of a high-tech suit, not the physiological transformation that has occurred in previous versions with their cautionary tale premise of “science gone wrong”.

There’s nothing wrong with the science in this version of THE INVISIBLE MAN. It's dysfunctioning psychology that’s of more interest...

Whannell moves focus away from invisibility and repositions the story to examine how one person, using all the means at their disposal, can try and break another person’s state-of-being down to the point where they can’t distinguish between reality and paranoia. 

This is definitely a movie about gaslighting at its most extreme…

For people unfamiliar with the term, Wikipedia summarises gaslighting as;

A form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes such as low self-esteem.

No need to explain anything further about the premise. The definition above nails it!

Elisabeth Moss plays Cecilia Kass.

As the film starts, Whannell has Cecilia staging an escape from her home; a high-tech, sterile, over-designed mansion located on the precipice of a cliff above a thunderous ocean below. It’s clear she’s been planning her flight for some time. Judging by the presence of a bottle of sedatives by the bedside, Cecilia has drugged her husband Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen).

Throughout this opening sequence, Whannell and Cinematographer Stefan Duscio allow the camera to move through the house without succumbing to conventional filmmaking technique, resisting any inclination to place the camera in any one place for too long and creating the impression in the viewer’s mind that there’s an unseen presence silently surveying Cecilia’s every move.

It’s a technique that creates tension and unsettles the viewer from the film’s opening moments.

Her dash for freedom is not without its moment of sheer terror…

Waiting for her sister Alice (Harriet Dyer) to arrive, Cecilia is surrounded by wooded darkness. Her flashlight jumps from one spot to the next as she tries to illuminate the place where the next nerve-jangling noise screams from… 

After what seems an eternity, Alice arrives. 

Uncertain about what’s happening, Alice tries to get some answers from Cecilia, but her line of questioning is cut short by Adrian’s arrival. He manages to get to her car before she can respond to her sister’s screams to “Drive”, giving him time to smash the passenger side window of her SUV in an effort to drag Cecilia out of the vehicle by her hair.

Alice eventually responds, flooring the accelerator, leaving Adrian raging in the middle of the road.

Three weeks later, Cecilia, who is staying with her policeman friend James (Aldis Hodge) and his daughter Sydney (Storm Reid), has adopted a siege mentality to the outside world. She is gripped by fear that Adrian will appear at any moment in an attempt to force her back to the life that she’s been so desperate to escape.

The suburban, domesticated setting Cecilia finds herself in is the perfect environment for her to start second-guessing everything around her. She becomes highly distressed when Alice unexpectedly arrives.

Cecilia starts berating her for creating the possibility that Adrian has followed her, but Alice is quick to burst her paranoia.

Adrian is dead. He committed suicide.

The point at which Whannell allows the audience to relax just for a moment allows him to start ramping-up the tension, minute-by-minute, scene-by-scene.

It’s at this point in the film, the Blumhouse brand and business model of filmmaking comes into sharp focus.

Let’s digress for a moment…

Owen Gleiberman, Variety Chief Film Critic, has just written an opinion piece about why Harrison Ford’s new movie THE CALL OF THE WILD cost $125 million. In the article he asks the question about why an otherwise mid-budget movie like THE CALL OF THE WILD would have a budget that positions it as an entry-level, popcorn-munching, aspiring franchise blockbuster. Gleiberman also cites THE IRISHMAN as another example of a mid-budget film whose production budget reportedly went North of $200 million.

He argues against the logic of studios throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at movies that should really only cost somewhere between $25 to $50 million dollars. 

Elsewhere in the article, Gleiberman cites Blumhouse Productions, the production company behind THE INVISIBLE MAN, as an example of a filmmaking organisation that has been more circumspect with budgets...

Very rarely does anyone in the American film industry ever comment that a Jason Blum produced movie lost money.

If you take THE INVISIBLE MAN as an example, it cost $7 million to make. Universal has gotten behind the film’s marketing and may end up spending more than its production budget, but the price tag for the entire exercise is still going to be less than $20 million.

It would be a shock if the film didn’t make that money back just in its first weekend at the North American Box Office.

Blumhouse invests in projects that are cost-effective to fund and they work with filmmakers who understand that technique and innovation is as, if not more, important than spectacle.

Leigh Whannel never falls into the trap of overreaching with this film. The point at which the story could have gone the way of THE MUMMY (2017), Whannell drops any pretense that this is a big budget extravaganza, opting to focus on his star, Elisabeth Moss, and extract every ounce of performance he can from her.

Keeping the film fixed on Cecilia gives Whannell the freedom to work against audience expectation and keep “The Invisible Man” exactly that for the majority of the film’s 124 minute running time.

A student of the film’s he grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s, Whannell takes a leaf out of Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (1979) playbook and resists the temptation to show too much of the “Monster”. Instead, he allows Moss to drive the fear, the insecurity and paranoia; making her look more and more unstable as she reacts to events that nobody else seems to be seeing.

The supporting players also contribute to the film’s success at “keeping a lid” on events.

Aldis Hodge is great as James. Hodge plays the character with the right balance of sympathetic and disbelieving. He stays calm throughout but his physical presence represents the only protection Cecilia has.

Kiwi actor Michael Dorman plays Tom Griffin, the slippery lawyer representing his dead brother’s financial interests. Dorman is both simultaneously slimey and pathetic. At one point, as Cecilia starts to piece it all together, she roasts Tom with a wince-inducing verbal zinger, delivering the film’s most memorable line!

THE INVISIBLE MAN also benefits from a fantastic Benjamin Wallfisch score, merging traditional orchestral music with electronic dissonance that enhances the mental mayhem Cecilia is experiencing. 

Wallfisch uses piano and strings to help accentuate Cecilia’s fragile state of mind; vaguely familiar to some of the 1990s Thrillers, like BASIC INSTINCT (1992), that the late Jerry Goldsmith created scores for. As the action escalates, heavy electronic music and sound effects are blended to accentuate the present, but unseen danger represented by “The Invisible Man”.

While Universal’s Dark Universe series of films has not been released as planned, THE INVISIBLE MAN shows that the right filmmaking talent combined with the right scale of execution can deliver an excellent movie that does justice to Universal’s “Classic Monsters” while establishing its own identity, proving there is a place to successfully revisit iconic cinematic characters with a contemporary story in a modern-day setting.

THE INVISIBLE MAN MOVIE (2020) USEFUL LINKS

The Invisible Man (2020 film) - Wikipedia
​The Invisible Man (2020) - IMDb​
​The Invisible Man (2020) - Rotten Tomatoes

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