The Invisible Man is a 2020 science fiction horror film written and directed by Leigh Whannell. It stars Elisabeth Moss and Aldis Hodge among many others and revolves around a woman who starts to suspect her husband who commits suicide has found a way to cheat death. The Invisible Man (2020) movie review
The movie begins with Elisabeth Moss’ character Cecilia escaping her husband’s Adrian (played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen) giant seaside mansion. Believing she is done and finally able to live a free life, she gets news that he has committed suicide. He has also and left a large sum of money to her. Believing it to be too good to be true, she starts to suspect that her husband is playing with her. He is just not the as he is not the type to cause himself harm.
From this point you have a bunch of cliches such as Cicilia believing Adrian is not dead and nobody believing her, people thinking she is crazy and them generally distancing themselves from her to either give her space or disappear from her crazy life. Either way, she becomes almost abandoned in her belief that Adrian is not dead. Slowly she starts to suspect that she is being watched until she starts to truly become paranoid.
This is where things really get interesting. Cicilia uncovers a lot of things about her invisible spectre and IMO this was done in a good way where things were introduced in small increments, followed by a tense scene, and again a new revelation. Moss did a fantastic job as this wide eyed paranoid character who is smart and resourceful but also scared for her life.
However, the movie is not without faults, often relying on jump scare as well as other characters acting like idiots (why would Cicilia hit a girl whom she loves and wants to put through college? It literally took less than 10 seconds for the cop to turn on her. It made zero sense.). A lot of other things in the movie happen in a way where a sequence of events have to line up perfectly for a *blank* to be pulled off.
The movie at times is all over the place, sometimes feeling like a monster movie, sometimes action, sometimes thriller/horror flick. All depending on which part of the movie you are looking at. However, with all the negatives out of the way, it has some great tense scenes and fantastic special effects. There were many neat editing shots that put it far above average movies in the similar genre. A lot of things seemed to have been revealed at the right time and were not rushed. Others came out of nowhere and were not explored further.
Your enjoyment of the movie depends on whether you can ignore flaws and see the movie as is. The movie did well considering it was released during the COVID-19 pandemic. (remember when people bought 10+ packs of toilet paper for some reason?). It was released online on most movie stream sites and grossed over $124 mil with a $7 mil budget. This almost guarantees sequel(s)/spinoffs.
Thanks for reading my The Invisible Man (2020) movie review
