THE INVISIBLE MAN
Think back to late February 2020, The Invisible Man arrived in cinemas and everybody would have been walking around saying things like “Imagine that? An invisible threat that would terrify us to the point where we wouldn’t be able to leave our homes? SUCH A THING IS THE STUFF OF HORROR MOVIES” and then somebody else would have been like “WHY ARE YOU YELLING?” and then that first person would have been like “I’M NOT YELLING – YOU’RE YELLING” and then second person would be like “I AM SIMPLY MATCHING YOUR ENERGY” and then a third person would be like “Have you seen the news?” and then the first two people would both stop and be like “No? What’s happened?” and this third person would be like “Oh no, nothing, it’s just an article about Bernie Sanders building momentum coming out of the Nevada caucuses.” And then the other two people would be like “Oh yeah, saw that, saw that.”
And then these three people would go to the movies, see The Invisible Man, have a great time and then not go to the cinema again until The Croods: A New Age came out ten months later.
The Invisible Man was originally conceived as part of the Dark Universe; the cinematic universe Universal Studios concocted to reboot all of their ancient monster movies, like what Marvel did with their heroes only without all that pesky planning or public interest. Despite doing a big photoshoot with all of the big future DU stars – Tom Cruise! Javier Bardiem! Johnny Depp! – it all fell apart pretty quickly after The Mummy reboot was DOA.
It’s for the best, really, because The Invisible Man is a great, terrifying film and would have been dumb as hell if it were forced to squeeze into the same world as Russell Crowe playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The Invisible Man is so scary because there’s nothing there, and normally in a horror movie that’s the perfect time to feel relaxed, because our hero is obviously not in danger because THERE’S NOTHING THERE. Except in this film where an invisible Oliver Jackson-Cohen (who is so good in both series of The Haunting of...) stalks and terrifies Elizabeth Moss. There’s nobody in the room with Elizabeth Moss but that doesn’t mean there’s nobody in the room and it makes everything tense always. When Elizabeth Moss starts throwing paint around trying to reveal who is right in front of her, that’s when the scares start to hit the hardest. Watching it with my fiancé Kate she yelled “OH FUCK OFF!” a good number of times round about these parts.
How would I fit into The Invisible Man? At one point Elizabeth Moss’s character Cecilia goes for a job interview but her invisible ex has removed everything from her portfolio, and she faints in the office. I imagine word of that interview got around that office pretty quickly, and the film could use an extra scene where that information gets back to our young hero, Peter Jones.
IF I WERE IN 'THE INVISIBLE MAN' I WOULD: BOMB
