The Invisible Man
MFC Review
The Invisible Man (2020) is the latest film by Leigh Whannell, screenwriter of Saw and the Insidious saga and director of the acclaimed movie Upgrade (2018). This version is a free adaptation of the story of the same name by author H. G. Wells, as well as the Universal Classic The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933).
The film stars Elisabeth Moss in the role of Cecilia Kass, a woman trying to escape her abusive husband, the wealthy optics engineer Adrian Griffin, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen. Once she has escaped, Cecilia begins to be harassed by someone she cannot see and, convinced that Griffin has managed to make himself invisible, she seeks to flee from him while the people around her begin to doubt her sanity.
The Invisible Man is a horror-thriller that uses peculiar camera movements to suggest the presence of a threat that we cannot see. Thus, the terror of the film is achieved thanks to sequences that follow apparently untraveled paths and shots that make room for characters who are not there. The first act is quiet and full of tension, successfully setting the pace and atmosphere for the rest of the film, while slowly introducing us to the sense of paranoia neatly achieved thanks to Elisabeth Moss’ amazing performance. The minimal use of the jumpscare resource makes The Invisible Man the perfect proof that the most effective horror is the one that suggests and not the one that seeks to surprise.
After the failure of the movie The Mummy (Alex Kurtzman, 2017), Universal Studios put on hold its Dark Universe project, a shared cinematic universe similar to that of Marvel Studios, in which they planned to develop films of their classic horror characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman. In this universe, the Invisible Man was going to be played by Johnny Depp, but the project was transformed into a more original interpretation of the story, independent of the universe of movies Universal wanted to build and resulting in one of the best horror films of 2020.
0 Comments