The Invisible Man was a creative and terrifying experience that could’ve failed easily, but instead was masterfully made to deliver a tense experience at the movies. I’ll be honest I went into this thinking it would be cheesy and not executed well, but man was I wrong.
At the surface The Invisible Man just seems like a traditional take on a stalker moving with another toxic white male, but in reality it’s an incredibly innovative movie about a toxic white male. This is an incredibly difficult subject matter to deal with and this film dealt with it incredibly.
Immediately the movie puts you in this tense situation where Elizabeth Moss is sneaking around the house in complete silence and with each movement you’re wondering what’s going to happen next. That tension never lets up from the start, and we’re handed this incredibly executed slow burn of mental decay.
There is so much that director Leigh Whannell does with empty space. There are so many shots where all the characters leave the frame and we’re just looking at an empty room wondering where this man is. It becomes this incredible game throughout the movie of trying to figure out where he is and what he’s doing while we slowly see the wheels spin off our main character.
What I loved about this was that the audience is constantly on edge because we never see the villain and we’re constantly wondering where he is and what he’s watching. The tension keeps building as I’ve said all the way up to the final act where it all comes crashing down.
There were moments in the movie where people in my audience literally gasped at what was happening towards the end of the movie. That being said the ending to me was handled so great and gave me a sense of satisfaction to how everything in the movie came to a close. The idea of toxic masculinity was handled so well particularly in the finale because it shows how women are constantly on guard against an assailant that they may not even know or think is there.
Elizabeth Moss does a great job in this role and was able to really show the decay of her character because of her former husband. She provided us with a sense of fear that felt real and relevant to current times and issues. The Invisible Man is a tense movie that makes you look over your shoulder and see things in the shadows that may not be there.
I give The Invisible Man an A
