“The Invisible Man” Makes Visible Scares

AP

Remake of Universal’s 1933 monster movie is a modern classic

According to any respectable armchair psychologist, the reason most of us are afraid of the dark is because we ultimately fear the unknown. Fortunately, in our time we’ve created all sorts of implements—torches, candles and flashlights—to stave off this existential fear.

But “The Invisible Man” smashes that flashlight into pieces, snuffs out our fires and plunges us into the depths of that darkness we fear—all without flicking a single switch.

Though he could do that too, and the scariest part is, we wouldn’t even know until it’s too late.

A remake of the classic 1933 film, “The Invisible Man” marks the latest attempt at rebooting the “Dark Universe” franchise of cinematic monster icons like Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. After initial excitement, this franchise felt as dead as Dracula’s dates with the successive failures of 2014’s “Dracula Untold” and 2017’s Tom Cruise vehicle “The Mummy.”

This time, however, producer Jason Blum, the economical horror hitmaker behind Blumhouse Productions and sensations like “Get Out,” has lent his talents behind the scenes, helping to transform “The Invisible Man” into one of the most thrilling cinematic experiences in recent memory.

“The Invisible Man” snuck into cineplexes on Feb. 24, but as with other movies whose wide releases were cut short with the closing of most theaters in March, it has since become streamable on platforms such as Apple, Amazon, Fandango Now and YouTube. And, though the rental price is a hefty 20 dollars, if you gather enough people around the television set, you’ll likely still come out wealthier than if you took the same group to see it in theaters.

The movie opens with Cecilia Kass (Elizabeth Moss), a woman who has just drugged her abusive boyfriend Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and is desperately looking for an escape. The fact that she needs to drug him in the first place suggests the extent of his depravity, and to make matters worse, her boyfriend’s ominously cold, massive and angular abode feels straight out of the set from an early horror movie like “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”

After an utterly breathless opening sequence, Cecilia hides out with her childhood friend James Lanier (Aldis Hodge), a police detective and a single father to high school senior Sydney (Storm Reid). Cecilia’s life seems to be taking a turn for the better, until she learns that her ex-boyfriend has died and left part of his vast fortune to her.

Cecilia doesn’t know how to react, but she doesn’t need to, because quickly after receiving this news, the world around her starts to react on its own. Important papers go missing from her briefcase, stoves overheat on their own, and knives begin swishing through the air. At first, some of these sight gags may make you giggle with their lo-fi charm, but as their deathly severity ramps up, dread replaces any sense of amusement.

Because her obsessive boyfriend was a successful optics engineer, Cecilia logically assumes he must have created an invisibility suit to torment her. Unfortunately for her, this idea astounds anyone who doesn’t know the film’s title or hasn’t seen the trailer—so basically every character in the movie. 

The rest of the film follows Cecilia as she alone attempts to flee the dangerous, invisible monster devastating her life, and director Leigh Whannel—who cut his teeth, among other body parts, writing and acting in the first three “Saw” movies—plays the audience like a creepy marionettist from the Black Forest, guiding viewers to suspense set pieces and then locking them in with Cecilia and her harrowing invisible stalker.

“His primary love was getting a reaction from an audience,” says Whannel’s IMDb biography, and the director certainly fulfills this lifetime commitment in “The Invisible Man.” 

Wiedling the camera like an old master, Whannel not only makes the audience share in Cecilia’s fright at every turn, he crafts one of the most bloodcurdlingly shocking cinematic murders—you’ll know it when you see it. But, to further spoil this moment or any of the other sequences from the back half of the movie would be to deprive the film of the thrilling first viewing it deserves.

Complementing Whannel’s direction is Moss’ acting. In her ability to combine sympathetic vulnerability with inspiring grit, she makes Cecilia a worthy addition to the storied list of cinematic scream queens.

Though some recent commentary has propped up this modern remake as a scarier improvement on the 1933 original, this new movie ultimately builds on—rather than rejects—the essentials of the older classic. Directed by James Whale, the visionary behind iconic films like “Frankenstein” and “The Old Dark House,” the original movie combined zany moments of macabre humor with genuinely shocking outbursts of violence, as well as revolutionary special effects by John P. Fuller and his uncredited team.

In addition to continuing this firm commitment to visual effects with the help of special effects supervisor Dan Oliver, Whannel’s remake simply modernizes the original’s tone by updating the violence to sting even today’s desensitized public and downplaying the comedy to emphasize the cosmic inevitability of the proceedings.

As a result, Whannel manages to create such an overwhelming feeling of cynical dread that the movie falls into the canon of older classics like Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now,” John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and even modern hits like Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” or “Midsommar.” These movies all create the inescapable feeling that there’s nothing you—or any of the characters—can do to stop the horror from playing to its awful conclusion, and though the film contains plenty of surprising reversals, this nihilism haunts “The Invisible Man” too.

It’s a great movie that needs to be seen to be believed, even if it’s main attraction is invisible.