It’s truly a shame how much public expectations (or at least, those of initial onlookers) for the recent re-imagining of H.G. Wells’ “The Invisible Man” were poisoned by the failed cinematic experiment that preceded it. In 2017, Universal released a terrible take on one of its classic movie monsters with “The Mummy”, and the film’s poor critical reception and disastrous box office returns all but sealed the fate of the studio’s cinematic franchise, the “Dark Universe”. While the existence of that failed attempt at serialized, interconnected films shouldn’t necessarily inform one’s impressions of future adaptations of the “Universal Horror” icons, it’s telling that those icons were all but dormant in cinema until this remake, the trailers for which had the markings of a jump-scare riddled mess. On a personal note, hearing that the writer and director of “Saw” also wrote and directed this modernization made me more than a little skeptical in that regard, especially given my instinctual aversion to jump-scares. So, with the amateur marketing and the creative team behind the “Invisible Man” remake seeming to spell doom for the finished product, how did the end result turn out?
Well, if there’s anything the final product should teach you, it’s that one should never judge a book by its covers, and that a remake can modernize the source material and expand on its themes without being too separate from its inspiration. Such is exactly what this “Invisible Man” film sets out to do, and it not only succeeds in establishing its own thematic identity, but also manages to be a modern take on the source material’s narrative without coming across as hackneyed or clumsy. This film, released just last week to almost universal praise, has earned every bit of that acclaim for taking the already unsettling themes of the H.G. Wells story and giving it a fresh, intense new spin. So, what kind of story does this new spin tell?
Cecilia Kass (Elizabeth Moss) lives a life of all-encompassing fear and paranoia following her escape from her abusive ex-boyfriend, Adrien Griffin. Even hearing of his sudden death two weeks after her departure from his lavish beach-side home does little to cull her fears, for while she lives in relative safety with her police detective friend James (Aldis Hodge) with the promise of millions of dollars from Adrien’s will, she also suspects that his cycle of gaslighting and domineering is far from over. Most unsettling of all is the string of strange happenings wherever she goes, from the presence that only she seems to notice around the house to the harm that seems to befall anyone close to Cecilia. As Adrien was an optic science genius, Cecilia suspects that her unrelenting abuser is both alive and invisible, but with nothing supporting her supposedly implausible theory and the suspicion of her friends, her family and the law all against her, she soon finds herself in the midst of a deadly cat-and-mouse chase, all while wondering if it’s Adrien or her mind that’s been playing so many tricks on her.
Growing up, I was an enthusiastic reader of the works of H.G. Wells, and I was always going to look at any adaptation of his works with a lot of scrutiny thanks to the author’s importance to the science fiction genre as a whole. Still, while the original book and the classic Claude Rains Universal film were fascinating takes on the horror of an invisible threat and the dangers of science left to the hands of a madman, those themes could very well have been played out and tired by the time of this remake, so it only makes sense that this new take on “The Invisible Man” focuses more on being a modern re-contextualization than being a remake set in our present day. Before expounding on how that works on a deeper thematic level, however, I should get all of the obvious praise out of the way by first addressing the stellar acting. The cast across the board does wonders at performing believably as their respective characters, but it probably goes without saying that Elizabeth Moss absolutely steals the show as Cecilia. The character could have fell into the typical beats of a paint-by-numbers scream queen, but Moss’s performance works in perfect harmony with the sympathy-eliciting screenplay, and hers is a struggle punctuated by relatable fear, uncertainty, and eventual determination as she risks everything to exposed the veiled threat haunting her to the world. Elizabeth Moss is running a marathon of acting in this film, and it’ll be saddening to me if she receives nothing in the way of accolades for this palpably heartfelt portrayal of a woman running for her life.
“The Invisible Man” is also a thoroughly impressive film on the technical and cinematic side of things. While the prospect of an invisible assailant is nothing new to horror films (both classic and modern), this movie more than compensates through sheer, unadulterated atmosphere and anxiety-inducing tension. Even the calmest scenes of Cecilia walking through the house are made all the more nail-biting by the expert use of long, Kubrick-esque empty shots from her perspective. In fact, the film’s pacing may be its greatest strength in terms of building up scares, as those long shots work wonders at taking viewers in and out of anxiety and for faking them out without being too telegraphed or predictable. What’s most impressive in terms of this film’s cinematography, however, is its incorporation of Cecilia’s perspective. Most of what we see of Cecilia’s unseen attacker is from her point of view, which not only allows viewers to empathize with her struggle, but also aids the tense atmosphere of her search for the invisible stalker by putting us in the exact same position of trying in vain to spot clues to his location. It’s these kinds of camera tricks and filming techniques that takes the familiar premise in a remarkably fresh direction, which brings us to “The Invisible Man’s” greatest strength as a remake- its thematic aspirations and the narrative surrounding them.
Part of the horror of “The Invisible Man” throughout all the versions of the story is the voyeuristic potential of the titular villain’s powers, and it seems that Leigh Whannel was aware enough of that potential to implement it into a narrative about the dynamics of an abusive stalker and his victim. This take on “The Invisible Man” is, in essence, a horror film for women who feel ignored and powerless in the face of a real and unrelenting stalker, and there’s a lot of sub-textual commentary going on about how men with power and/or wealth hide behind their resources and exploit society’s views on “over-emotional women” for their own sinister ends. The very nature of invisibility makes it a powerful in-universe tool for gaslighting, which in turn makes for a tense morality tale on how ignoring victims and taking their circumstances at face value will only cause abuse and stalking (and the damage that follows) to escalate beyond the point of no return. As the original H.G. Wells story was already about the exploitation of scientific advancements by a malevolent sociopaths, this approach to the new movie’s narrative seems like a natural and brilliant expansion on the original’s themes.
With all of those brilliant moves in mind, “The Invisible Man” is a near-perfect modern remake of a sci-fi horror classic. Some scenes are held back ever so slightly by an overenthusiastic musical score, and the scenes in which actors must simulate being attacked by someone invisible are not quite seamless or devoid of inherent silliness, but the film is nonetheless a tense, harrowing, and smartly written horror film that makes me hope that Universal has more remakes like this in the works. Hats off to Leigh Whannel and the rest of the cast and crew- they really get what makes “The Invisible Man” so persistently scary.
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