This review will be a bit different than my other reviews in that it will not be a running stream of consciousness of my thoughts during the movie. There is quite a bit to cover here, so sit back grab your popcorn and let us get started.
I will review this movie in stages including covering the advertising of the movie, the film (plot, music, cinematography), and any interpretations or messaging I believe the movie gave us. STOP HERE if you do not want any spoilers.
The Fall and Rise of The Invisible Man Trailers
Trailers, with an S, yes. You all may remember I reviewed the first trailer of the movie which dropped in November 2019. If you have not read this yet, here you go. The Synopsis of that review was "the trailer is trash, they need to revamp." The general public review of this trailer is that was revealed the whole movie, it took away all suspense and did not motivate anyone to pay money, leave their home, and go see it. I included a link to the original trailer in my review, which I linked above. I will also add the written text plot for the movie from the November 2019 trailer here:
"What you can’t see can hurt you. Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss 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." - Universal Pictures
This summary leaves Cecilia's sanity as an unknown and the trailer wants us to guess whether or not this man is actually invisible. EXCEPT they did not do that and spoiled the entire movie with their trailer. My recommendation for how they could fix this was to lean into the plot and focus the story on Cecilia and how she proves he is invisible.
So, a new trailer was released in February 2020, and it was SO MUCH BETTER. They leaned into the fact that we know the man is invisible and focused the new trailer on the suspense, the action, and the story. Good job. There was also an updated description of the movie,
"After staging his own suicide, a crazed scientist uses his power to become invisible to stalk and terrorize his ex-girlfriend. When the police refuse to believe her story, she decides to take matters into her own hands and fight back."
So much better! They leaned in and were able to give us a better story because of it. There is no doubt in my mind that they went back and reedited this movie after the initial trailer release because there are scenes in the first trailer that are not in the movie. So, let's talk about the movie.
Film Review
Alright, I was excited and concerned because Blumhouse has HITS. However, they have a lot of misses and they have a history of taking great concepts and throwing money at them, but not completely fleshing them out. However, they had a really great director and screenwriter, Leigh Whannell, the writer behind Saw, Insidious, and Dead Silence (all movies I love), who I believe really took them to that level of those hits we know Blumhouse can provide (like Get Out).
This movie was suspenseful, it kept you engaged, I was literally on the edge of my seat in the movie theater at one point. The movie builds tension and tells you the story through its camera work and not through unnecessary dialogue.
The movie begins showing us Cecilia's escape and besides two words, the first few minutes are silent. We really get to focus in on letting Elizabeth Moss' acting tell us the story. We see the detail and planning that went into this escape without using a cheesy flashback. What you don't see in the trailer is Cecilia leaving and telling her dog, "I can't take you with me," but deciding to release him from his collar anyway.
*Quick mental health aside, most people in DV relationships are controlled by their partners' abuse of their animals. They often also find it difficult to leave if they are not able to bring their animals with them. I thought it was important that they showed that in this film.*
Freeing the dog from its collar is obviously symbolic in her fleeing this relationship, BUT it is for naught because she puts the dog collar in her bag. I think this is how Adrian found out where she was, I think he had a tracker on the dog collar and her bringing it with her made it easier for him to find her. Now, I think he also could have just found her anyway, but they made a point of showing us the release of the collar in the film so I have to believe it was intentional. Putting the collar in the bag was also symbolic I believe because it also shows us that just because you leave the relationship does not mean the psychological effects of the DV relationship are left behind as well. Taking the collar with her is the film's way showing us Cecilia taking Adrian with her.
Now, Cecilia's sister was irritating (on purpose I am sure). If I tell you to meet me in the middle of the night on a back road to pick me up, sitting in the car as soon as you pick me up is not the optimal time for you to be asking me questions! Drive! Ugh, you saw that part in the trailer, so I will move on.
We see Cecilia continuing to be afraid and cautious and not leaving the house for two weeks. It is not until her sister arrives to tell her Adrian died that Cecilia begins to feel free and move on with her life. The movie tips you off and reveals that Adrian is not dead with Cecilia's line after she receives mail at the friends home she is staying in, "Nobody knows I am here." EXACTLY. We are supposed to just write that off as movie magic or ignore the fact that she received mail there just because it was a piece of legal mail? Nah. I knew. Adrian found her and he put that mail there.
When they met with Adrian's lawyer/brother I knew from jump he was in on it. He had that same creepy vibe as his brother and it was all too convenient. Cecilia decides to sign the papers and take the money and use it to pay for her friend's daughter's college fund. All good. Any decision made at that moment I believe would have been good. My gripe with Cecilia taking the money is that it is another form of control from Adrian. Later in the movie when the lawyer/brother is there again he says some BS about Adrian making her think he is invisible and that is his true power I felt like that was a cop-out. Also, he just conveniently had a picture of his dead brother in an envelope to whip out? Nah.
Alright, so what I love in how the film tells us this story is how it make us second guess ourselves. There are several moments in the film where the camera pans to an empty space, or Moss is not framed in the center of the shot which gives us the illusion that someone else is there. It makes you stare intensely into the screen looking for any little clue that he could be there which helped build tension and bring you into the story. The way they used lights, shadows, and other scary movie camera tricks were amazing. Early in the film, Cecilia is cooking breakfast and Adrian steals a knife* and starts a fire in the kitchen when she walks away. They run back in and use the fire extinguisher to put out the fire. You see the smoke from the extinguisher* and it makes the viewer stare into the screen once again because you think you may see him in the smoke somehow. Beautiful. In one scene, Cecilia (being a smart person) covers the floor with coffee and sits in the corner so he cannot enter the room without her seeing his footprints. During this scene we see Cecilia backed into a corner trying to coax Adrian to come out and questioning why he chose her to be in this relationship. The camera films Moss from straight on and she is looking at the doorway, assuming he may be standing there. However, they also film this scene from an upper side view so that we can see Moss looking at the door but it actually shows the viewer that Adrian is sitting in the chair next to her the entire time looking down at her sitting on the floor (at least that is what I think).
There were a couple of moments that I thought were amazing in how they subverted typical scary movie moments. It was right after Cecilia hides one of the suits/evidence in her hiding spot in the closet.* One moment in particular that I loved was the typical 'girl looks out of small crack through a door to see if the killer is out there and BOOM he's staring right at you.' What I love about how they did this in the film is, of course, we are all expecting a big BOOM moment when she peeks out the door. However, it is pointless because he's invisible! So it makes you wonder, well is he there? Has he been standing there this whole time and we just did not see because he is invisible? It takes the typical jump-scare to another level because we are afraid of what we can not see and the movie leans into that.
Adrian commits several actions to isolate Cecilia and make her feel the only place she had to turn to was to go back to him, which is how DV relationships work. He turns the sister and friends against Cecilia to make her believe she has nowhere to turn. When she finally has proof to show others, she goes to the police and they do not believe her and she goes to her sister, but Adrian kills her by making it look like Cecilia slashed her throat*. I take issue with this only a little bit but will discuss later. When she discovers she is pregnant (duh) he redirects his efforts to attacking Cecilia's friends if she does not come back home. There is a big fight scene in the hospital, which was amazing honestly, but this thing will be too long if I go into that just go see it. She lures him into exposing himself and Cecilia damages his invisible suit enough to allow it to glitch. The in and out of being able to see his suit combined with the fight scene was gold. They jump back to the house and show us the only two Black characters in this film are in danger and The Invisible Man is about to attack the daughter. The daughter and father try to fight the Invisible Man, ultimately, Cecilia ends up using the fire extinguisher* to expose the Invisible Man and shoots him to his death. You think this is the end, but it is not and I knew that was not the case for two reasons: 1. it was too easy. 2. the Invisible Man this entire scene did not have his suit glitch and there was no way Adrian could have made it from the hospital to the house and put on a new suit in that amount of time.
The way the movie ends was good, moved just a little too fast but was good. The FBI storms someplace and they find Adrian "kidnapped" and tied up in a crawl space to frame his brother for the entire thing. He gets to reenter society as a good guy and try to get Cecilia back. This was important because I believe a narcissist would not be okay with pretending to be dead for the rest of his life. He had to find some way to be back in the limelight and able to run his business. That's why his house was kept in pristine condition while he was "dead," he always planned to come back.
Cecilia creates a plan within a plan to try to get Adrian to admit on audio (she's wearing a wire) that he was the one behind everything. However, he does not do this because duh, of course, he wouldn't but he lets her know that he did by saying something only she would understand. She excuses her self to the bathroom, goes to put on the suit she hid* and makes him kill himself. There's a bit more to that scene and the ending but you get the gist of it.
Overall it was really good. I loved that the film stuck to some of the rules of film, but flipped a couple as well. One of the rules that I loved that the film stuck to, was showing a weapon and using it. You may have noticed I put an asterisk next to a couple of scenes, which I did to highlight these points. Adrian stole a knife and they show the butcher block more than once, then the knife was used to kill the sister in the restaurant. A knife was also used by Cecilia to kill Adrian at the end. Very poetic doing it at dinner just as he did to her sister. There was another that I did not mention earlier with pepper spray. The daughter threatened to use pepper spray when Cecilia said there was a man in the room earlier in the film, the dad made a humorous comment about who she was going to spray since no one was there. At the end of the film, we see the daughter use the pepper spray anyway which resulted in the Invisible Man/Brother falling over and bumping into things. The fire extinguisher was deliberately shown earlier in the film and we thought we might see Adrian then. It was then used again at the end to expose the Invisible Man during the fight scene at the house which led to his demise but was also a trick because just like we did not see Adrian the first time, we did not see him the second time either since it was his brother.
A Few Issues
Now, you might be wondering, why didn't the police just look at the security footage of the restaurant? They would have clearly seen that Cecilia did not kill her sister! Well, if you were a cop and you showed up a scene where a restaurant full of people all said they saw a woman dead on the table and a woman holding a bloody knife then the woman with the knife says "I did not do it, my invisible, dead, ex-boyfriend did it" would you actually look into it? No, you would not. We would hope that all avenues would be explored and people would do their jobs diligently, but when something is not even in our consciousness we can not be expected to go looking for it.
This comes up again when Adrian punches the daughter in the face and makes it look like Cecilia did it. We as the moviegoer are all aware of the possibility of someone being invisible so we can be frustrated that they would believe Cecilia did it. However, our brains are wired to make things make sense and the only sense that could be made in that scenario is 1. the child was hit in the face, 2. there is only one other person in the room, 3. that person hit the child.
My issue with the restaurant scene is that I do not believe Adrian is that graceful to go unnoticed in that restaurant. Some should have bumped into him, spilled something, I don't know, but I doubt he navigated that space with as much finesse as they want us to believe.
Another issue I had was Adrian's access to the attic space. We see that he has clearly been staying up there or at least spending time up there since his belongings (cell phone, keys, etc) are there. Adrian is not that tall, I do not believe he could have gotten up without the use of the ladder and no one seeing the ladder moving! Now, let's say he only moved around when no one was home, fine. EXCEPT if he gets up the attic space after they are gone and stays up there, then who moves the ladder back to its original place one he is up there?
-- maybe it's the brother, but I am not sure.
Finally, I was kind of annoyed by the film score. There were moments I felt the music was a bit too dramatic for the scene. Small issues, but issue nonetheless.
Themes/Interpretations
I think the importance of addressing the emotional abuse as well as the physical abuse was done well in this movie. It is not just about the physical pain, it is about how abusers influence their partners and the people around them. Yes, she left him however he was still with her and she could still feel him there. We see this a lot when people escape those situations and people get frustrated because the victim still does not disclose or give any information in fear that the abuser will find out or know somehow.
The importance of water in the movie is highlighted but I am not sure I understand it just yet. At the beginning of the movie, the waves crashing up onto the beach provide a noise protection/barrier for Cecilia to flee in the night. The water in the shower was a noise barrier that did not allow Cecilia to hear Adrian put the pill bottle on the sink. During a fight scene, Cecilia is lured to the water running out of the sink. Cecilia created a plan to lure Adrian out and that night it was storming outside. The water from the shower was on when Cecilia lured Adrian out by trying to kill herself. Cecilia also chased Adrian through the parking lot in the rain. At the end of the movie, when Cecilia kills Adrian and walks out of the house you can hear the waves crashing up from the beach again as she stops and stares out into the night. My loose theory is the water is shown in moments of vulnerability and of strength for Cecilia.
Final Thoughts
All of that being said, I thought this was a great movie. I love the modern adaptation of this classic film and thought it was done well. I do wonder about the original edit of this film and how different it would have been if they had not gone back to make changes. There were clear scenes that were edited out of the film or cut down, but I think they were all good choices. There was a quick little nod to the original film in this movie, did you catch it?
I was also reminded of how much I love going to solo movies, so let me know any suggestions you have of what I should see next.