‘The Invisible Man’ and the horrors of abuse — movie review

The Invisible Man modernizes the classic 1933 Universal Monsters movie with a take on abusive relationships, gaslighting, and toxic masculinity

It would have been so easy for director Leigh Whannell to go for easy scares with a premise like The Invisible Man. Instead, he almost does the exact opposite and allows the movie to build to something as he flips H. G. Wells' 1897 science fiction novel and 1933 film adaptation into the modern age. 

In this version, we follow Cecilia Kass (Elizabeth Moss) as she starts her new life after finally getting away from her abusive ex-boyfriend Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a renowned scientist and entrepreneur. In the opening scene, we watch Cecilia execute her long-awaited plan as she slips out of bed having just drugged Adrian to keep him asleep. It's a perfect example of how much of a grasp Whannell has on constructing a horror set piece. He uses sound, silence, camera movements, and Moss' stellar performance — that only gets better — to make the escape almost unbearable to watch. The tension he creates is Hitchcockian.

Cecilia makes it out with help from her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer) and begins living with James (Aldis Hodge), a childhood friend, and his daughter Sydney (Storm Reid). While she's escaped Adrian's grasp, she still feels his presence, even after she learns that Adrian committed suicide. 

Putting the sci-fi elements aside, Whannell focuses on a feeling that many women have expressed after experiencing trauma — including abusive relationships, assault and harassment. The lack of control that Cecilia had in the relationship has made her paranoid and unable to truly feel safe. In a stunning monologue, she explains that she lost control of every aspect of her life. As the movie progresses, it begins to dive into other facets of abusive relationships. 

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While an odd coincidence here and there make Cecilia feel uneasy, it's when she finds out after fainting at a job interview that she had high levels of Diazepam in her system, the drug she used to sedate Adrian to escape, that she becomes convinced that Adrian is alive and found a way to make himself invisible so he could stalk her. Naturally, James, Emily, and Adrian's brother Tom (Tom Griffin) don't believe her. 

The original Invisible Man focused on Adrian, making him the victim as he loses control to science. Here, Cecilia loses control to Adrian. Even after “death,” he finds a way to gaslight her and alienate her from her friends and family. A classic emotional manipulation. Whannell lets so much of the horror be motivated by it. He makes the audience feel like we are losing control too by letting us in on more than the characters are seeing, achieving a feeling of dread. His careful camera placements and movement toy with our sense of the space — often he shows us empty frames and captures Moss from a distance to create negative space around her.

Moss is an emotional powerhouse continuing to deliver on the promise she showed in other genre movies like Us. Just like Toni Collette in Hereditary, she doesn't let the role get away from her. Her performance is heightened, but not over the top. There needs to be some grounding for the movie to work as it thankfully doesn't overexplain itself. Moss gives that to us. 

The Invisible Man is a terrific exercise in broad horror. Without compromising its rich themes or depriving the audience of moments of terror to hang onto, Whannell is able to make an artfully made and emotional movie that feels auteur-driven but still made for the mainstream. As we keep moving forward in this new Golden Age of horror, it's clear he's going to join Jordan Peele and Ari Aster as a staple of it.