THE INVISIBLE MAN
Dir: Leigh Whannell (15 100 mins)
A re-imagining of HG Wells classic novel with a twist, this stalker thriller rachets up the tension with Elisabeth Moss anchoring the horror brilliantly. She plays Cecilia Kass, a woman trapped in a controlling, abusive relationship by her leading optometrist husband, Adrian, a creepy Oliver Jackson-Cohen.
After a bravura, superbly tense opening, that has her escaping her husband’s sprawling, sea view compound with the help of her sister Emilia (Harriet Dyer), Moss is told weeks later that he has killed himself and she has inherited $5 million. She sets about helping those who helped her, Aldis Hodge’s good cop who takes her in, along with his daughter played by Storm Reid. Then odd things start to happen, knives fall to the floor, windows open, dinners burn on hobs and she starts to question whether her husband is not dead at all.
Her friends believing her traumatized refuse to believe her claims and her worries and the strange happenings escalate, leading to concerns about her sanity. Her inheritance it turns out is linked to her mental competence, she is being controlled by her husband from beyond the grave it seems. Moss believes her husband has faked his own death and has the power to turn himself invisible.
The Hitchcockian thrills escalate in a series of brutally tense sequences, all given believable immediacy by Moss’s exceptional performance.
From the writer of Saw Leigh Whannell who also directs, this is a brisk, efficient thriller. A treatment of the old Universal monster movies that feels relevant today. Lifting the genre material via a gutsy performance and transforming the original novel to make a comment on the Me too movement and gaslighting. this is a horror film with a point amidst the enjoyably gripping schlock.
4/5
Words: Kieron Self
Available now for digital download and on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™ and DVD 29 June.