The story behind the production of
“The Invisible Man” reads like a cautionary tale for a terrible movie. “The Invisible
Man” is one of several very old properties from Universal Studios that make up
its monster movie franchises. (Others include “Frankenstein”, “Dracula”, and the
“Wolfman”). When it appeared that franchises with endless chapters like Marvel, DC Comics, and Star Wars were the future of movie money, Universal was sad
to contemplate that it did not have a ready franchise to pour all of its money
into. All it had were theses monsters. So it attempted to create an interconnected “Dark Universe”. This led to the Tom Cruise led “The Mummy” flop, after which the “Dark Universe” appeared to be a
dead idea. However, for shits and giggles, and because creative directors in
movie studies are legendarily averse to new ideas, all the monster movies look like
they will be rebooted anyway. “The Invisible Man” is
one of those movies. A top-down directive is always a bad reason to make a movie.
The next bad idea for making a
movie is to cash in on a political moment, in this case #MeToo. I’ve complained several times now about movies and scenes in movies
that seem to exist solely to garner applause for being woke but have little to
add to the cinematic experience. (“Game of Thrones”, “Captain Marvel” and my
last movie review about “Wendy” come to mind). “The Invisible Man” fits
squarely in the definition of a #MeToo movie. I bet the pitch for “The Invisible Man”
probably went something like this:
Producer: We want to reboot “The
Invisible Man”. The franchise made a lot of money in the past. There is a built-in
audience and the horror movies are a safe genre to open in theaters.
Creative Director: I like it!
Producer: But it will be different.
We’ll make it a #MeToo movie and market it as such. It’ll start Elizabeth Moss,
an actress perpetually put upon by mean men in successful series like “Mad
Men” and “The Handmaid’s Tale”.
Creative Director: Green Light! Is
there a script?
Producer: I’ll get the monkeys to
start typing it right away!
Well, sometimes even the worst ideas
can turn out all right. I am happy to report that “The Invisible Man” is a hell
of a movie. It well-directed, brilliantly acted, and is scary. I never saw the
original movie, but I did see Kevin Bacon’s “Hollow Man”. This movie is much
better and scarier than “Hollow Man” and I expect better and scarier than the original
movie franchise. Credit for this is heavily dependent on the #MeToo premise. Movies
in the past about invisible men, at least “Hollow Man”, told the story from the
man’s point of view and leaned on the voyeuristic pleasures of being invisible,
for example, peeping at naked women. Here, the point of view of the movie switches
to that of a visible woman, Elizabeth Moss playing a recent escapee from an abusive relationship
who then becomes suspicious that her controlling ex has turned
himself invisible to better continue harassing her. The voyeurism is gone because the
audience generally does not know whether it is happening in any given scene.
What replaces it is a sense of uneasiness and then terror. The #MeToo premise,
far from being its usual anachronistic annoyance, makes the story far more
effective as a horror movie.
If this movie has a predecessor in
old cinema, I don’t think it would be the original movies, but “Gaslight” from
1944 starring Ingrid Bergman. That movie’s impact wound up verbing the name of
the movie in the English lexicon. To “gaslight” is to “manipulate (someone) by
psychological means into questioning their own sanity.” Here, the the invisible man pulls the
ultimate gaslight. (Double Feature, anyone?).
The object of the ultimate gaslight, slowly questioning her
sanity and being terrified out of her mind is Cecilia Kass, played by Elizabeth Moss. Because there are no other actors in the room, Elizabeth Moss is
effectively in a one-woman-show. It is the sort of performance that would garner an easy Oscar nomination
if it weren’t in the horror genre. She is perfectly cast in this movie for the
reasons outlined along with her preternatural ability to bring a character through
the gamut of all the emotions in the right order. She is helped by a wise script that knows that a woman does not need to win every scene in order for the movie to
be considered feminist. To understand why this character is interesting and
Captain Marvel is not, is to understand what makes characters interesting in general, a standard which applies equally to both the sexes.
“The Invisible Man” was written
and directed by Leigh Whannel, who was awful person that wrote the first
three “Saw” movies and helped provoke a decade of disgusting torture porn. Only
within the last six years, has the horror genre entered a mini renaissance of
talented writers and directors like Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and Jennifer Kent
whose movies are actually scary, not simply exercises in cruelty. “The Invisible
Man” belongs in this mini-renaissance. It seems Leigh Whannel has learned something
about making movies in the last few years. I suppose there is hope for every
single last one of us.
