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The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell, 2020)
🕑 Added 2020-03-30 00:34:07 +0000 UTC
SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW.
I understand why so many critics are impressed with The Invisible Man. There's a lot that's impressive here, which is why I found it so disappointing that Whannell was incapable of making the film gel satisfactorily. Unlike so many contemporary B-grade horror films and thrillers (including many from Blumhouse, which produced Invisible Man), this film engages with movie history not just in terms of its thematic lineage but with its formal know-how. When Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) is menaced by an unseen assailant (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), most of the time the film shows her being terrified of offscreen space, or slow pans into empty space. It's almost Hanekesque, and I doubt that a mainstream film since The Blair Witch Project has gambled so much on the unseen. This is, quite literally, how they used to make 'em, just juiced up with modern technology.
The problems are plot- and genre-based. While it makes perfect sense that the premise would lead to Cecilia being judged as crazy -- making the film a sort of pop-referendum on how our society treats women victims, and the misogynist pathologizing of trauma in particular -- Whannell is forced to keep the plot going, and this means that Aiden, l'homme invisible, is somehow not only unseen but super-human, able to kill cops and orderlies with a single punch to the chest. What is his fucking suit made of? It just looks like a leather SM get-up covered in Google Earth ball. There's no suggestion that it makes him Superman.
So The Invisible Man introduces the idea that it's a fantastical film that engages with a real-world premise (stalking), only to cheapen that premise with slipshod narrative mechanics. I mean, there was a different option -- treating Aiden as a real projection of Cecilia's fears, in which he is not only ever-present but also omnipotent, a kind of terrifying embodiment of the Lacanian Real. But that would have created other problems. I don't want to give up on genre film -- I hold George Romero, John Carpenter, and Joe Dante dear to my heart -- but I just don't know if big money and social commentary can exist side by side.
[Related sidenote: Cecilia learns that her abusive psycho stalker has impregnated her against her will, and there isn't even a discussion of abortion? 2020 America sucks ass.]
