HG Wells’ seminal novel The Invisible Man brought out the fantasy of a man who can render himself invisible. Circumstances lead him to commit a crime and he embarks on a tragic career in crime thereon. The story has had a hundred reiterations since it first appeared in 1897. As a result, there's always been a been there done that quality to all its screen adaptations. A director has to be really imaginative to bring something new to the table and surprise the viewers. Director Leigh Whannell, who has been associated as a writer in such horror franchises as Saw and Insidious, tries his hand at resurrecting the old monster but surprisingly doesn't bring into play the low-brow horror tricks very much visible in the films he has written.
In fact, instead of surprising us with something new,
he has gone in the opposite direction and has rendered the invisible
man, well, truly invisible in the sense that he isn't there in most of
the film. Instead of creature horror, what he's aiming for is
psychological horror. So the focus is on the heroine Cecilia (Elisabeth
Moss) who is shown as someone overtly delusional and paranoid and who
blames her behaviour on an invisible stalker. Now, it's a unique take
alright and we admit that the trailer of the film did intrigue us but
the final product is underwhelming, to say the least.
Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), is a world
leader in the field of optics. He's also a world leader when it comes to
toxic masculinity and is a huge control freak as well. Tired of his
overbearing ways and the abusive relationship she shares with him,
Cecilia runs away from his sea-facing mansion one night after drugging
him. She seeks asylum with a long-time friend, well-muscled James (Aldis
Hodge), who happens to be a cop and is also a single father to a
teenage daughter (Storm Reid). She's still so paranoid she doesn't even
venture outside James' house. However, some days later, her sister
(Harriet Dyer) informs Cecilia that Adrian has committed suicide. She
thinks she's finally free of him for good, then things start to go bump
in the night.
As said earlier, not enough creativity has been
utilised to bring about the mayhem created by an invisible villain. The
antagonist simply doesn’t pack enough of a menace to make us fear him.
And we aren’t told why he’s such a major control freak and why he’s
actually after Cecilia. Shouldn’t such a high profile genius aim for
something more, like world dominion, for instance? Here, he isn’t able
to terrorise a fragile young woman properly. You sit through the film
simply because of Elisabeth Moss’ convincing performance as a harassed
woman who is totally convinced that her supposedly dead ex is sitting
silently in the corner mocking her and wants you to believe that as
well. If only her level of conviction was shared by the writers and the
director, we would have gotten a cracker of a film instead of this
half-baked product full of lofty intentions but falling short on
expectations.
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