The Invisible Man

Ten Second Review: Overbearing music and plot holes dog this at times tense thriller. A little more time with the scripting and a little less time with orchestral swells would have helped this film greatly.

I have to be honest I went into this a touch blind. I’m familiar with The Invisible Man and understood that the film was set to be a thriller but other than that I was a little in the dark. There seemed to be a positive buzz, so going in I was fairly intrigued.

After literally escaping from her abusive boyfriend, Cecilia (Elizabeth Moss) remains wary of going outside. When she is told he’s committed suicide, she’s even more nervous. She doesn’t trust anything and the fact that she’s seeing him in the shadows isn’t helping. 

To begin I’d like to say that there were lots of scenes that were very well constructed and had me on the edge of my seat, gripping the arms of the chair. When this film is deep in the throws of a scene, it really does hold on to you. By and large, Moss is to credit for this as her acting really takes the film forward. You feel her fear and pain at every turn and you are willing her to survive and win out. 

It should also be said that too many studios take up IPs and put out crappy copies with as little original thought and new creativity as possible and this certainly brought something new to The Invisible Man story.

However, solid moments and evidence of some effort on the creative team do not excuse a film’s faults, of which this film certainly has a few. I don’t think it’s fair to rate a film well based on the fact it wasn’t just a retelling of the classic story. If that’s the bar we are setting for criticism then we would have to praise any wholly new films as inherently valuable. 

I also think that a film’s reputation cannot rest exclusively on the talents of its actors as they’ve been hired because they’re good at their job. While Moss is good here, that doesn’t free the film from worthwhile critiques.

There are three main qualms I have with this picture. The first is the incredibly loud, overly dramatic and over-bearing music. It blared and swelled deafeningly and not in a way that truly adds to the film. If the music is constantly loud then it ceases to be dramatic at the top end at all. It felt like a score we’ve heard before and not a very well executed version at that.

This also feeds into the second issue I have with the film, which is its predictability. I don’t know that there is ever a point where an audience will be truly surprised. The setups are so clearly outlined that when they pay off as expected, you’re a little disappointed that it was that simple or didn’t subvert your expectation even a little bit.

My third query with the film is its plot holes. Maybe plot hole is too strong a term but there is a required suspension of disbelief and requirement to not interrogate the plot at any point. It needs you to not think which doesn’t work with a thriller. It’s not a spoiler as it in the trailer above, but we see her use paint to see where he is. From then on why is she not always using a spray can to see if he’s near. There are moments where assumed guilty parties would be immediately cleared with CCTV that is certainly in use in given locations. There are moments that go unexplained as they probably can’t be and parts where I assume the hope is that you’ll be so caught up in the scene that you don’t pause to question.

There is a version of this story that is an excellent film in the vein of 2018’s Unsane but with a sci-fi edge. What we end up getting is an original reuse of an existing IP that people were shocked wasn’t as bad as it could have been. While it does something new with the story, it doesn’t do anything new for film and thus its more of a surprise than a whole success.