A Filmmaker's Review: "The Invisible Man" (2020)

“The Invisible Man” is probably best remembered as one of the scariest Sci-Fi novels of all time. By HG Wells and concerning a man who turns himself invisible and then has trouble turning himself back, it shows the descent of the human mind in knowing that they cannot be held accountable for their actions. Over the years, it has been adapted many, many times and some of them have been very successful and it has even been adapted indirectly such as in the film “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (fun fact: that was one of my favourite movies as a child!). “The Invisible Man” was an amazing book turned into some amazing movies, but this one was not one of them. Let us investigate why.

First of all, I want to start off on a good note. The 2.5 marks is given entirely to Elizabeth Moss. She basically held the movie together with that performance. She is very good at playing the traumatised woman who is being haunted by her own past, sometimes giving off some Marion Crane vibes. Honestly, without her I think the film would’ve been a lot worse than it actually was, because the dialogue was awful and the atmosphere was not really there except for it being dark most of the time.

So, let’s go back to the normal stuff which is everything that is wrong with this film. The first thing is that I didn’t really enjoy the dialogue a lot of the time. I think it was very forced and very cliché. Be prepared as well, the word ‘cliché’ is a word you will hear a lot in this review. The dialogue sounded like it had been written for a play rather than a film and when it comes to a film, dialogue has to be natural. This was not natural. It was like every ten seconds, Elizabeth Moss was trying to explain the plot to someone else.

The atmosphere wasn’t really there except for at the beginning. After this, it just became dark all the time and after that we got those cliché shots of the rooms of the house at night in complete silence. I thought that this was an obvious attempt to make us realise that Adrian, Tom or whoever was there. But honestly, when this appearance actually came about, it had gotten tired and boring. I think that many of these shots though were just added in order to make the film get to two hours and maybe then we could think it was a thriller. Apart from that, it was just a thriller film.

The twists were very predictable. I always do this thing with thriller films where I pause the film in the middle and guess the ending. If I can guess the ending, then the movie isn’t very good. I actually guessed pretty much everything that was going to happen step by step in the plot. Why? Well, it was because this film was trying so hard to be subversive and different that it just became the same as every other thriller. I think it’s become a tiring trope of thriller films in which the woman is fighting a man that she was formerly in love with. But, after the middle of the film, I could guess every step he was going to take against her and I also guessed exactly what happened at the end to the point that I knew that he was in the basement or cellar.

All in all, this film was embarrassing. I didn’t see why they had to try to make it as psychological as they were trying to make it jumpy. I think they should’ve gone for full-on horror or more like a a stalker-vibe thing and try not to mix the two because it got messy. I don’t think there’s a better way to say anything in this movie apart from the word ‘cliché’. Honestly though, I thought Elizabeth Moss displayed some incredible acting skills and her ability to change throughout the movie from a woman who was running away from a man to a woman who is slowly being driven mad is just a sight to be beheld. I think she is an amazing actress.