The Invisible Man (2020): Suffocatingly Suspenseful

I first watched this movie with my Dad in an Indiana hotel room, how long ago, I can't remember. Growing up in a Conservative Christian household, horror movies were taboo to me as a child, so The Invisible Man was a news flash, and I found myself drawn to its skin-crawling suspense, a then-unfamiliar feeling. Fast-forward to today, and I'm now as cultured in the horror genre as any other cinephile might be, and just as prone to ponder if I could have used that time more valuably, too. But no matter. What else am I to do but rewatch the darn thing for old time's sake? And lo and behold, I was sucked in just a hair more than I remembered, which I can't say about modern reinterpretations of classic stories as often as I'd like to. The Invisible Man is a modernized take on H.G. Wells's 1897 tale of a mad scientist, the story of an unseen assailant told through the lens of an abusive relationship. Rest assured, it has remained an extremely well-executed movie despite its refinishing, a paranoia-speckled cat-and-mouse thriller that's just about the most dangerous game of hide-and-seek ever played. Ready or not, here he comes.

Efficiently horrifying, The Invisible Man streamlines its scares without cutting corners. The hallways are dangerously long, the rooms impossibly dark, and the suspense always scarier than the actual scares, as it should be. Of course, this movie is dead in the water without winsomely effective handling of its gimmick of an invisible man, but how it uses him never ceases to amaze. The Invisible Man is both smart and scary. Maybe it's the phone of a dead man buzzing in Cecilia's attic. Perhaps it's a bucket of paint over the head of this unseen assailant that causes him to suddenly materialize where there was nothing just a moment before. You'll jump sometimes, just never at what you might expect to. The characters in this movie are also refreshingly bright for a horror flick. Cecilia is a clever character used in clever ways, and it helps that Elizabeth Moss's acting is terrific. Her performance teeters somewhere in between paranoia and enlightenment, hysteria and cognizance. You'll know she isn't crazy, but it's easy to see why everyone around her would think she is.

I hope you like suspense. This movie isn't just scary. It's patient, too. For just a moment, imagine with me that the screen is a card table. The best thing I can compare The Invisible Man to is a dealer laying out the deck and slowly turning the cards over one at a time, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading you around another corner where an invisible man might be lurking. In every way, it plays by the rule that the anticipation of a scare is more effective than the actual thing, and its commitment to this idea does it favor upon favor. Visually, its cinematography can be surprisingly good, especially at dawn and dusk. The ways that Director of Photography Stefan Duscio plays with shadows, rain, and soft, glowing light are particularly eerie. The familiar stays familiar until the sun goes down, where what once seemed safe suddenly looks dangerously hostile.

Granted, this all runs like clockwork up to a certain point until The Invisible Man decides that it needs to add twenty minutes that it doesn't really want for the sake of a subversive ending that it doesn't really need. I've seen differing opinions on the ending of this movie elsewhere, but I'd argue that I wasn't as unimpressed with the ending itself as I was with how they chose to treat it. It's like someone decided to combine an epilogue with the actual story, and it adds too much without accomplishing enough. Still, I'd be remiss to end this article on a sour note for a movie that's anything but. The Invisible Man is a masterclass in suspense, the type of horror movie I hope they study for years to come for its efficiency and intelligence. In the best way possible, it's like someone is putting their hands around your throat, and slowly squeezing, enough for you to feel it, but never enough for anyone else to notice. I'd argue it's better that way.

The Invisible Man certainly grasps the art of showmanship for a movie that's more or less one big metaphor for gaslighting in a toxic relationship. It's a markedly suspenseful and even terrifying little thriller, not because of what it does so much as what it chooses not to. The minimalism of this movie is extremely refreshing, the exposition thankfully sparing. Most of the time, we're allowed to merely creep down a dark, quiet hallway with Cecilia as she plays a dangerous game of wits with her unseen assailant, bracing herself for another invisible attack that is too often scarily unfamiliar from the last one. And when you have all these things, who needs good acting? Apparently, The Invisible Man does. Elizabeth Moss practically metamorphoses into a woman stuck somewhere in between inspiration and insanity, and her performance is almost as unsettling as the presence of this invisible man, albeit in an entirely different way. This movie was actually a bit better than I remembered, and I'm happy to report that a loose adaptation of practically ancient source material that could have counted on recognizability to gain points instead chose to do something different, something absorbing, something terrifying.

The Invisible Man - 9/10

1 Peter 3:7