Review: The Invisible Man (2020)

Before we talk about The Invisible Man, let’s talk about Dark Universe.

Dark Universe was Universal’s plans to make their own Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Because thanks to the success of Marvel, everyone was trying to replicate what they did since that is the current big trend.  Have a bunch of movies interconnect to tell a larger story.  And honestly, I’m all for studios trying to do this.  It’s comparable to reading comic books like I did growing up where all these characters interact with each other and build to a greater payoff.

Anyway, Dark Universe was going to contain all the classic Universal monsters of the past one hundred years of film.  The difference being they have had these characters interact previously.  Hell, one could argue that Universal started the cinematic universe trend long before anyone else did with films like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man about eighty years ago.  Basically, what Universal decided to do was try this trend out again for a newer audience.  And why not?  Universal has made films about these characters plenty and there is still an audience for them with Brendan Fraser’s Mummy trilogy making a lot of money, the multiple incarnations of Dracula being successful, etc.

But all it took was one massive financial and critical failure to put an end to Dark Universe before it ever really took off the ground.  Dark Universe relaunched with The Mummy (2017) and my god what a massive failure of a film that was.  The studio tried way too hard to cram in as much as they possibly could within one movie to jumpstart their long term plans quicker without focusing on making a good singular Mummy movie to launch their brand.  I could make a long blog entry on its own about how massive a flop The Mummy (2017) was and it couldn’t contain every single problem I had with this movie.  Easy to say, Dark Universe was done after how badly The Mummy (2017) failed.

And Universal was really invested in making the Dark Universe a thing.  They casted Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp in future roles as well as greenlit a bunch of other movies to be made from another Wolf Man movie to the Bride of Frankenstein.  But as I previously mentioned, a lot of those came to halt within the blink of an eye.  Dark Universe was dead….or so we thought. 

After all these projects got cancelled, one of the leading producers of modern horror, Jason Blum, swooped right in and picked up one project from the scraps.  That project was The Invisible Man, which was supposed to be Johnny Depp’s character in the Dark Universe.  Here is the thing about Jason Blum productions.  These movies are made on a miniscule budget and give their directors total creative freedom.  That’s why they are one of the few studios left that can successfully make back their production budgets.  So no more Johnny Depp.  Get your cast for relatively less.  And hand the reigns of this project to someone who actually makes horror movies instead of being made by the guys who wrote the Transformers movies (another reason why Dark Universe failed).

So enough preamble, what did we get here?  Honestly, a pretty damn effective horror movie. 

For starters, let’s give kudos to the director’s vision.  Leigh Whannell has been working in the horror genre for a while now going back to his first movie, the first Saw.  After writing MANY of the most well known horror movies of the last fifteen years, he started to get behind the camera more starting with Insidious 3 five years ago.  He’s slowly started to develop a good reputation for actually focusing on building up scares more so than going for the easy jump scare.  Which is a huge plus for me because I’m fairly tired of easy jump scares.  And that’s what works here.  He focuses more so on his surroundings to give off the vibe that this invisible man could be anywhere in the scenery.  Really playing into that fear of the unknown factor really helps this movie’s cause.

Also really working into this movie’s favor is its acting.  Elizabeth Moss (best known for her role in Mad Men) really gives one hell of an acting performance.  She carries a lot of the emotional weight of this movie as a woman with PTSD from being in a toxic relationship and having her abusive ex coming back to torture and haunt her.  But instead of making her out to be a normal horror damsel in distress, she comes out looking like a badass in her attempts to take down her threatening ex.  That’s another reason why this story works better in modern times than expected.  This realistic take about abusive relationships and how your abuser can mentally, emotionally, and physically manipulate you in a way.

Honestly, the only real complaint I have about this movie is there are some glaring details that can’t be ignored if you really pay attention.  And these details can single handedly end the movie quicker than it needs to.  I’m not going to really spoil the exact instances because I am going to recommend everyone to see this movie in the end, but I will say this one thing.  In a movie where they constantly reference security cameras, there is a surprising lack of detail when it comes to where security cameras come into play.  Because if they utilize security cameras at restaurants, outside people’s houses, etc., then this movie would have ended a lot quicker because there are scenes that the script wants you to defy actual logic and just roll with movie logic.  Movie logic; where the filmmakers want you to turn off your brain and just go with the flow.  This is one of those occasions where movie logic really bothers me because normal places like restaurants and other public places should have security cameras, but they don’t here.  I keep referring to restaurants, so I should stop there before I spoil it because that is the biggest instance of how this shouldn’t have happened if actual logic came into play.

In the end though, I really liked this movie al lot.  2020 has not been off to the best of starts when it comes to movies you must see.  But this one I actually do recommend as the first can’t miss mainstream movie of the year.  It’s well acted and well made.  A fresh take on a horror classic that might lead to a new Dark Universe?  We’ll just have to wait and see there, but if Universal places these properties in the hands of Blumhouse and get more great movies like this, then Dark Universe will be in good hands.

A-