Written and Directed by: Leigh Whannell
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Harriet Dyer, Aldis Hodge
Swift shot: If you saw the trailer, you saw the movie. The Invisible Man was a convoluted mess of weak (and stupid) characters and probably the lamest script to come out of Blumhouse.
Let’s just get right into it. This was not a good movie, but I have to give credit to the publicists and production team for convincing you all otherwise. It helps that we are all trapped inside right now.
If you want to see some better “Invisible Man” movies, watch the quirky and depressing Memoirs of an Invisible Man, starring Chevy Chase. If you want to watch an interesting thriller, watch Hollow Man starring Kevin Bacon.
I mean, at least we get to know about those characters. With Whannell’s script, we know pretty much nothing about any of the characters. And I didn’t really care about any of them.
I felt like I was watching Fifty Shades of Invisible Man — flat, boring, insipid people. If you want me to root for characters, make them interesting.
The movie starts with a nod to Sleeping With the Enemy, which I thought was a nice subtle touch. And, honestly, when the movie finally, mercifully ended, I realized that the film I would have much rather watched was how Cecilia (Moss) and her boyfriend, Adrian (Jackson-Cohen) devolved into their controlling, abusive relationship in the first place.
Essentially, Cecilia is in a relationship with an evil Tony Stark. We don’t even see him until the third act. So, all we know about the guy is that he rapes and hits his girlfriend. Again, I am not spoiling anything here if you watched the trailers.
So, Cecilia hashes out an elaborate escape plan one night after she drugs Adrian. He’s so controlling, apparently, yet she can easily arrange to have her sister, Emily (Harriet Dyer) meet her to pick her up on the road. So oblivious is Emily to the abuse, that when Adrian attacks them as they flee, Emily is shocked.
But Emily is completely in the dark about how bad things have gotten, yet at one point in the movie she is accused of being smothering. Which is it? I am guessing Emily is not that close to Cecilia. Actually, I don’t care.
Anyway, Cecilia does flee, and holes up with James (Hodge), somebody that we are never properly introduced to. He’s a cop, he’s a single dad of an older teen daughter, and he is evidently refurbishing a house.
I initially thought James was her therapist, until I saw his daughter, Sydney (Storm Reid) was living there. So I was like, oh, ok, maybe James is Cecilia’s lover. I didn’t get that vibe. Ok, friend, not that anybody made a point of developing their relationship, OR ANY FUCKING RELATIONSHIP with Cecilia in the whole damned movie.
Oh, I know, you all just love Elisabeth Moss, she can do no wrong with you. Great; I don’t. So, if you want me to shell out twenty bucks to watch a movie during this crisis, it had better be entertaining and worth my money and time. This movie was neither.
Looking at Elisabeth Moss stare around a room for 45 minutes is not my idea of a smart use of screen time. And, if they were going for suspense, I felt none. The only time I was even slightly unsettled was when Adrian was peeping on Sydney.
There was at least one thing, one twist that they managed to leave out of the trailers. And I won’t spoil that, because you might hunt me down for ruining a movie that hasn’t got much else to write home about.
Like I said, if you watched the trailers, you saw the movie. She escapes her controlling boyfriend. He fakes his suicide, and he has some method of making himself invisible. She spends the rest of the movie trying to convince everyone she isn’t crazy.
And at the end of the movie when there is this big dramatic moment with Adrian, all the emotion is sucked out of the scene, because we have no clue who Adrian is. We have no other frame of reference about their relationship in the past. There is a payoff without a setup. Sloppy!
There is some irony about watching a woman trapped in a house, while you are also trapped in your house.
I have just given you all the ways this movie sucks story wise. Alas, the reason it is unforgivable is the many stupid plot holes in the third act.
From here on out, I will be getting into spoilers about shit that goes down that isn’t in the trailers. So, yea, spoiler alert. Read on from here at your own discretion!
Let me get this straight. The guy somehow fakes his death. We are never given any information how he pulled that off, because it would be too hard to figure out for the writers. That would have been interesting.
Fine, but when he is finally discovered in his suit when he slaughters like ten security guards, nobody started putting everything together that maybe Cecilia wasn’t crazy?
Hear me out, I almost would have let this major gaffe slide, but they showed the security guard desk with a whole panel of cameras in the hallway. Meaning, they would have video evidence that a be-suited person walked down the hall and killed all their friends. Plus, Adrian inexplicably leaves one of the guards alive.
That’s it. That’s the end of the movie. Cecilia was not crazy, even though she bordered on imbecilic for not taking the suit (or at least a picture of it) when she made her dramatic discovery of this state-of-the-art, unique invisibility suit.
She also took the knife out of the bag and got her prints all over it. Granted, that didn’t matter, as Adrian killed her sister in front of her and put it in her hand anyway. Oh, that was probably the only scene that shocked me. But, again, I didn’t know much about these characters. I did like Taylor (Nick Kici), the waiter, though.
But, Cecilia was just so dumb. And when she has her big “surprise” moment, I was like, uhm, no, you aren’t as bright as you think.
And at the end, when she murdered Adrian, cops would be like, yea, you used the suit. How stupid do you think we are? I mean, we aren’t all Leigh Whannell. There’s video evidence that it exists. Your buddy, James isn’t the chief of police or anything. You’re under arrest, genius.
Fun fact, back in 2000 I was having a conversation with my rocket scientist buddy that I like to share inane ideas with from time to time. I told him I had an epiphany about an invisibility suit. It would be made up of tiny little cameras that would instantly record the inverse of the images in front of it and display it back seamlessly.
He said it would never work. But then I found out the Chinese were working on something similar a few years later.
I did appreciate seeing my vision (ha ha) in a movie in a practical way. As that suit was exactly what I was imagining twenty years ago. So, that was cool.
Ultimately, I fear that the halo effect is in play with many people right now. They love Moss, so she can do no wrong, even when all the evidence in this shoddy film proves otherwise.
Save your money; think about how much toilet paper twenty bucks could buy right now — or at least use it to rent about three other better movies. Your family will thank you.
