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In review: Fearing is believing in ‘Invisible Man’

“The Invisible Man” is a movie I was not expecting. Growing up, I was a voracious reader of H. G. Wells. The first book of his I read was, “The Invisible Man”. Countless adaptations of the book have been made to some degree or other. All the adaptations I have seen have focused on what happens to a person’s psyche when they are invisible. What does that do to a man’s mind? In a lot of cases, it leads to perversion, insanity, and murder.

This movie doesn’t do that.

Instead, it focuses on the victim of his machinations, Cecilia Kass (played pitch perfectly by Elisabeth Moss). A move that pulls you into a world of suspense and terror from the first scene until eventually being thrown off this thrill ride by the start of the end credits

Cecilia leaves her controlling and abusive boyfriend, Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and hides out at the house of her childhood friend and now police detective, James (Aldis Hodge) and his teenage daughter, Sydney (Storm Reid).

Two weeks after her escape, Griffin commits suicide, leaving Cecilia $5 million in his will, which is being executed by Adrian’s lawyer brother, Tom (Michael Dorman). The money will be paid in $100 thousand increments each month. In order to keep receiving the money, she must not be convicted of a crime, nor be found mentally incompetent.

Shortly after receiving her first payment, Cecilia begins to feel like somebody is watching her as she begins to experience a series of unfortunate events. It isn’t until prescription bottle of Diazepam she lost reappears mysteriously, does she begin to suspect her brilliant, optics scientist ex found a way to become invisible and is now torturing her.

Nobody in her life believes Adrian is still alive, let alone, invisible. We the audience are shown enough to believe her, and that is where the true horror of this movie lies.

“The Invisible Man” shows us, through Cecilia, the fears we didn’t even know we had. At least for me, it did, but it isn’t a horror movie. At least the ones we’re all used to.

“The Invisible Man” is a psychological thriller with enough jumpscares that I was on the edge of my seat throughout the movie. The beginning, when Cecilia is making her escape, is filled with such suspense that even though I suspected what was going to happen, I had a pit in my stomach for her. Normally, movies like this don’t get to me, but it was written and directed so masterfully by Leigh Whannell and acted by Elisabeth Mosss that I was sucked into this two-hour thrill ride from the beginning. I was sad it had to end, but happy to have seen it.

Whannell, recently wrote and directed a film titled, “Upgrade.” I highly recommend seeing that, if you haven’t yet, as it was really good. If his name looks familiar, you may remember him from the first Saw movie, which he also co-wrote, so he is very familiar with the horror, suspense, and torturing his audience in all the right ways.

In my opinion, this is his best work to date, even with the logic holes, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

I do also feel the need to stress that as well as this movie is written and directed, it could only have worked this well with an actress of Elisabeth Moss’s talent. Could it have worked with a less talented actress? Maybe. But I wouldn’t risk it.

As much as this movie may have been envisioned by Leigh Whannell, this is Elisabeth Moss’s movie from start to finish and will make you believe “The Invisible Man” is real and leave you feeling like you’re not alone in an empty house.

J. A. Latona is a Dunkirk resident in charge of local nonprofit movie theater, El Rigby Theater. For movie related questions and comments email jalatonamoviereviews@gmail.com.

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