The Invisible Man is written and directed by Leigh Whannell who made Upgrade 2 years ago and concerns Cecelia (Elisabeth Moss) who is trapped in an abusive relationship in a house that more resembles a bayside prison with a man named Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who later commits suicide leaving her 5 million dollarydoos but when strange events start happening Cecelia starts to suspect that her ex might have found a way to stalk her from beyond the grave.
The Invisible Man is a movie I have very mixed feelings about, on the one hand Mr Whannell has clearly learnt a thing or 2 from his partner in crime Mr James Wan on how to craft a movie as this looks gorgeous on a big cinema screen with its use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio and the wide open spaces that are used throughout the film and the sense of dread it helps to create in the sense that anywhere isn’t safe and that death is coming around any corner at any moment.
The film also has some nice horror and action moments to it as well as some good performances particularly by Storm Reid from A Wrinkle in Time and Aldis Hodge and Harriet Dyer, all 3 of these people deliver good work as does Michael Dorman as the lawyer overseeing Adrian’s estate.
But the bad is sadly in the scripting area, the horrors of domestic abuse especially those aimed at women I feel are just too much with us in real life to treat in this kind of genre horror fare (it doesn’t help that the number 1 news story in Australia the week this movie opened was about a domestic violence murder) and those scenes just didn’t do much for me save for make me uncomfortable and not in a good way.
It also doesn’t help that we don’t really see the life Cecelia had with Adrian that she frequently talks about where she was controlled to within every inch of her life something that 1991’s Sleeping with the Enemy with Julia Roberts and Patrick Bergin at least showed us before the events of that film in the main played out.
And lastly as much as I think Ms Elisabeth Moss is talented and I do think she is very talented she’s giving a performance that just feels too familiar to me by now, she did it in the Handmaids Tale, she did it in the Kitchen last year and she does it again this year, the lone woman who ends up being abused or with someone abusive who takes to drastic measures to get their freedom back and after a while It starts to get a bit repetitive even though Ms Moss is very good in this movie.
And so that was the Invisible Man and for all its craftsmanship its script lets it down, 2 and a half out of 5.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment