I definitely did not SEE this one coming.
If it’s not obvious by my reviews for The Mummy (2017) and The Wolfman (2010), I am a huge fan of the Universal monsters. I grew up with them and I have been wanting reboots for all of them, including my personal favorite Universal monster: the Invisible Man. That’s why I was so excited back in 2020 for the release of The Invisible Man, directed by one of the most underrated directors: Leigh Whannell.
I saw it right when it first came out and I am just now getting to my review. Why, you may ask? Well, sadly The Invisible Man (2020) turned out to be one of my most depressing times watching a Universal monster movie. I really wanted to love the movie but I just couldn’t. Let’s get into it…
Beautifully Shot
Starting with my positives, one of the things I knew Leigh Whannell was going to deliver with was the way he films a movie. Every single frame of The Invisible Man is gorgeous and almost resembles panels seen from a graphic novel.
In the third act, Leigh Whannell embraces his Upgrade-style of camera work to show the Invisible Man taking out people in an insane asylum. It’s easily my favorite part of the movie since it finally turned into what I wanted from an Invisible Man reboot.
Elisabeth Moss Is God Tier
While I do have issues with the character which we will get to, what I cannot ignore is that Elisabeth Moss gives a great performance. I truly bought her as this broken traumatized individual being pushed into madness over the course of the runtime.
The same can be said for the rest of the cast. Everyone does a great job with what they’re given, especially Aldis Hodge as James. I personally wanted to see more of that character throughout.
This marks the end of my positives. Be ready…
A Boring Villain
How do you take The Invisible Man, one of the most charismatic and bombastic villains ever created and make him a wooden slate? I know that Oliver Jackson-Cohen is a capable actor who can deliver a great performance as shown from his time as Lucas on The Haunting Of Hill House. He was the one thing I was the most excited about besides Leigh Whannell.
Unfortunately, Jackson-Cohen is horribly wasted as Adrian Griffin. Part of the reason why The Invisible Man works is because so much emotion and personality comes through the actor’s voice. Whether it’s the eccentric Claude Rains, the charming Vincent Price, or the twisted Kevin Bacon: they provided a memorable character through just their voice and body movements.
Adrian Griffin never gets to do that. From the start, Griffin is portrayed as a silent and sinister psychopath who is abusive. Even when he’s invisible, Jackson-Cohen is given little to no dialogue and when he is finally able to speak, it’s just typical creepy serial killer/stalker stuff we’ve all heard before. I honestly cannot remember a single line of dialogue from Adrian.
On top of that, the character lacks any development. He starts as a psychopath and continues to be a psychopath throughout. With Claude Rains’ Griffin, we start off with him a bit unhinged but they also establish that he was once a good scientist. The formula and extended time as an invisible being is what makes him descend into madness and turn into a villain. Even Kevin Bacon’s Sebastian Caine, though a cocky and overly ambitious man, was still just a scientist and he evolves into the twisted, evil murderer over the course of the movie.
With Adrian, the character is sidelined and given zero development so his evil side just comes off as a hollow shell of what the character should be. Now a character can be evil without development: look at Michael Myers or Pennywise for easily the best examples. At least those villains provide enough substance for me to either be intrigued or intimidated by them. With Adrian, I just found him to be nothing more than a bland slate.
Cecelia Is The Worst Protagonist
Okay, so The Invisible Man goes for this invisible stalker concept. Not a bad concept on paper but it falls apart with the main character: Cecelia. She is an abused woman trying to escape the clutches of her ex and dealing with the trauma of her relationship. That’s when Adrian comes to toy with her and torment her until she breaks. Again, great concept but Cecelia is one of the most unlikable characters.
Throughout, she treats others horribly and actually makes her situation worse most of the time. In a modern age, there are so many ways she could expose him (which I will get to later) but she ends up doing the bare minimum and acts so much like a maniac that it comes off as unbelievable that she is unaware how she must look and sound.
Like I said, Elisabeth Moss gives a great performance but the character itself makes all the worst decisions possible and gives me no reason to root for her. This especially becomes the case in the last twenty minutes when the character makes a choice that basically just makes me hate her.
It Suffers From Blumhouse Syndrome
Blumhouse is known for haunting movies like Insidious and Paranormal Activity…and it shows. While the concept of an invisible stalker sound nice on paper, the execution is basically just a clone of movies like those I mentioned.
Someone moves into a new house, the person notices small changes like things being moved or activated. As days pass, the strange happenings keep getting more and more intense which drives the main character into mania and desperation. Sound familiar? That’s because the first two thirds of The Invisible Man are literally those movies almost beat for beat. The only thing keeping it from seeming like a generic haunting movie is that everyone already knows it’s an an invisible stalker by the title of the movie! The movie even tries to trick audiences by saying Griffin committed suicide, to make it seem like she’s being haunted (literally) by his ghost. Well, shocker here: he’s just invisible.
There Is No Invisible Man
The title should have been revamped to “The Cloaked Man” because this movie takes things in a more “realistic” direction by having Griffin be nothing but a man in a suit featuring cloaking tech.
Now I hate to view myself as a purist and I usually welcome changes in a reboot. In this case, I personally did not care for the high-tech suit idea. Not only does it remove a large part of what made the original book and movies so appealing but it raises more questions than answers.
Does Griffin eat? Does Griffin just sleep with that suit on? Does Griffin wait until everybody is asleep to go to the bathroom? And here’s the big one: this technological marvel is created with perfect cloaking technology which could allow Griffin to become one of the most powerful men in the world….and he uses it to stalk his ex?
On top of all this, the entire time I was looking at this suit: all I could think of was that not only was it a rehash of every Blumhouse haunting movie but it also rehashed an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. A deranged man in a cloaking suit stalking his ex-wife? Yeah, pretty similar. Sure, their methods and motivations are different but the similarities are still noticeable. The worst part is that Batman: The Animated Series did this concept so much better in under thirty minutes!
The Suit Makes No Sense
Yes, it’s a sci-fi thriller about an invisible killer so it’s not really supposed to make much sense. However, Leigh Whannell and company were determined to make this the grounded and realistic take on the character via the suit. So, my mind immediately started pondering this fancy suit the filmmakers created and I could not believe how many flaws I found with this suit.
First off, what kind of power source does it use? If he is stalking Cecelia for weeks at a time, how much life does its power source have? Then there is the way it works which at first I thought I liked. It uses hundreds of cameras to project the surroundings onto the suit thus hiding him. Not bad and is similar to cloaking tech used in the real world but…there is an issue.
The cameras on the suit are everywhere on the suit, right? What about the bottoms of his feet? He can’t have cameras down there because they would just be seeing blackness when he stands still and it’s doubtful that he’s walking on cameras. So, what is cloaking the bottoms?
Plus this suit remains 100% clean at all times. Even after Cecelia pours paint on him, the suit remains immaculate. I find it unlikely that the camera lenses never get any dirt or scum on them from all the running around he does. Speaking of…
Does Griffin Have Super Powers?
This was one of my biggest issues: Adrian is either a speedster straight out of the DC universe or he can teleport. It is ridiculous how quickly Adrian catches up with Cecelia in several scenes. There is a scene where she actually drives miles away to Adrian’s home and he arrives on foot in just minutes? What?
The same thing happens again when she attacks him and then leaves, driving miles back into the city to meet with her sister. Literally, minutes later as they talking, Adrian arrives. Even in the opening scene when he’s still just a regular guy, he somehow tracked her through the woods right to the exact spot where she is hiding with her sister in her car. Even Jason Voorhees would be accusing this guy of turning on god-mode. The same for when she is trying to expose him: I have trouble believing that he can move so fast without being undetected via sound.
He’s Invisible, Not Ethereal
As mentioned, Cecelia does the bare minimum in trying to expose Adrian’s invisibility. Most of the time she just tries to point and yell at where she just saw him. Not just once though, she says it multiple times…again and again and again. As if Adrian is stupid enough to just stay in one place to let himself get exposed.
However, in the 21st century, an invisible being could easily be detected in so many other ways. Liquid, powders, spray paints, motion detectors, lasers, etc. I have zero way of believing that Cecelia is the only one who detects Adrian’s presence. Unless he’s trained to be a ninjas, I doubt even he can be this undetectable.
What Is His Plan?
Due to having no development of our villain, Griffin’s entire scheme ends up just being confusing. So he’s stalking his ex because he thinks that tormenting her will end up making her fall back into his arms? Wait, what? Oh, and he’s obsessed with Cecelia having his child. Okay…why?
Nothing about this plot makes any sense. So not only are we rehashing Paranormal Acitivty and Batman: The Animated Series but now we’re rehashing a typical obsessed stalker movie? At this point, I gave up on the movie and realized that it no longer had any identity.
Overall Thoughts
The Invisible Man (2020) is only The Invisible Man by name. Everything else is just a bland hodge podge of other stories’ concepts featuring an “invisible” antagonist. It struggles to find an identity of its own so it just rehashes other movies and TV shows but does them worse by featuring a miswritten titular villain, an unlikable lead, stripping away too much of what makes The Invisible Man so iconic, and creating a story that is not scary. The twists it tries to do with the concept not only feel unnecessary but end up raising too many questions that bog the movie down.
I honestly found more enjoyment in The Mummy (2017) than I did this soulless reboot. Not only was I just bored by what it tried to do but I was also disappointed as a lifelong fan of the the original book and previous film incarnations. I give The Invisible Man (2020) my rating of a 4/10. It is a mediocre stalker film at best and a terrible Universal monster movie at its worst.
At this point, I’ve given up hope on a decent return for the legendary Universal monsters.
You’re all SO SWEET for making it this far and I hope you all enjoyed this review! I write about anything geek related, especially comic book related stuff so if you want to stay up to date with all the reviews, news breakdowns, and lists I do, make sure to follow this blog or follow me on Twitter @MelodyMacReady ! Love you all!
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