2020 In Review: The Invisible Man

Hollow Man: The Remake! 

AKA: A soap operatic gimmicky display of violence masquerading as an early 2000s horror movie, where a character dumps paint on an invisible man, to show the audience that there is indeed an invisible man.

*Slight Spoilers*

* * * * *

The writing of this movie is like something out of post season ten Grey’s Anatomy. Absolute bullshit. 

Tearful accusations, spiteful anonymous emails, secret pregnancies, undercover military warfare, double-agent evil brothers, violent deaths, hospital shootouts, drivers who are willing to pick up hitchhikers, take them to a house that’s very far away, WAIT for them do some breaking and entering, and then continue to drive them home is only the TIP of this unspeakable iceberg. Attractive people share arranged dinners and confessions of plot exposition, boiling down to the big reveal from the villain, in one of the most goddamn preposterous endings of a movie in recent memory, and this doesn’t even begin to cover the goddamn invisible serial killer.

The film should at LEAST have the decency to poke a little fun at itself, give the folks at home some meta comedy, or even an inkling of lighthearted awareness that this movie is not just overly serious, but so abundantly ridiculous.

Of course Invisible Man ‘20 is the perfect moral for the strong independent woman who don’t need no man in a post #MeToo era; a striking, bold woman against all odds to prove that her abusive husband is a literal monster, and dominate his toxic masculinity, but Cecilia’s revenge on her ex-husband shares more resemblance with the 2002 J.Lo flick ‘Enough’ than it does any Universal monster flick, let alone ANY horror film.

As far as terror goes, the film is gimmicky in ways that have plagued the horror genre since the late 90s. Have we not evolved past obnoxiously loud, deep-bass sound effects to accent a jump scare? Can’t the atmosphere of being stalked by an invisible killer just be haunting enough on its own goddamn merits?

Elizabeth Moss is a convincing actress but watching her desperately writhe on the floor in tears and yell into thin air, while being harassed by a cloaked menace eerily strikes chords with yet another film from the early 2000s... Not ‘Enough,’ but the Kevin Bacon classic, ‘Hollow Man.’ Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the film is a shitty movie about an unseen serial killer who gets paint dumped on them at one point to reveal them to the audience (this does happen), more so that Invisible Man 2020 often feels like a shitty Paul Verhoeven flick from the year 2000.

BE AS IT MAY, there’s a scene early on where Cecilia wakes up in the middle of the night and sees an eerie mannequin dressed up in coat and hat that most definitely resembles the 1933 Invisible Man, but that’s about as genuinely respectful as Leigh Whannell gets in terms of paying nods to the original.

BE AS IT ALSO MAY, There is exactly one very genuine surprise that takes place in a restaurant that no one will ever see coming, even if the twist is grade-A bananas, and that surprise should be applauded even if it is goddamn absurd.

BE AS IT MAY ONE MORE TIME, there is an incredible one-take sequence in a hospital that basks in glorious and gory violence during the third act of the film, and it’s not only where the film peaks but it is the very moment that makes one wish that Leigh Whannell would just be willing to use such dope-ass filmmaking to toy with the audience’s expectations, rather than their exhausted emotions.

Thank you all, goodnight moon.

*10 points to Kevin Bacon

Grade: D