The Invisible Man (2019) ***

February 28th, 2020
Author: Meredith Taylor

Dir: Leigh Whannell; Cast: Elizabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Harriet Dyer, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Michael Dorman; Australia/USA 2020, 129 min.

Australian director Leigh Wannell adapts H.G. Wells novel for the screen using a contemporary setting and a random take on the original. The result is mixed but would have been decidedly worse without the grandstanding performance from Elizabeth Moss as Cecilia Klass who is trolled by her possessive ex-husband even after his suicide. The outcome is just what we’ve come to expect from a classic Blumhouse Production, the masters of the schlock-horror TV series.

We first meet Cecilia making a midnight escape from her abusive husband Adrian (Jackson-Cohen) and their north Californian beach fortress that looks more like a tech headquarters than a family home – Zeus the dog being the only sentient inhabitant apart from Cecilia. Her sister Alice (Dyer) scoops her up just in time on a dark road, before Adrian can pounce. Alice drives her to the home of her childhood friend James (Hodge), a cop, and his teenage daughter Sydney (Reid). Cecilia is unable to venture more than a few yards away from the house – even when she finds out Adrian has committed suicide. Things get even more muddled when Adrian’s twin-brother Tom, a lawyer, announces Cecilia will inherit 5 million US dollars from her ex-husband, providing that she is not mentally insane or commits a crime. This is the cue for (now invisible) Adrian to prove she is both. He gets to work with some terrifying stunts making it look like Cecilia had delivered the vicious onslaught. Alice is left rooting for Cecilia, but Adrian somehow resurges in a sequence that is a complete steal from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. The not so-far fetched twist at the end is as unconvincing as everything else in this overwrought saga. There is not much of H G Wells left in this melding of horror and thriller, luckily Moss steals the show along with DoP Stefan Duscio’s astounding images. By the end the bloodshed takes over in an overwrought B-Picture that pushes its luck for over two hours. Overkill is the name of the game. AS

NOW ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 28 FEBRUARY 2020

  

   

   

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