The Invisible Man (2020)

Well, after the Dark Universe crashed and burned before it even got off the ground, I figured there probably wouldn't be any more attempts to resurrect the classic Universal monsters, at least not for a while. In the case of the Invisible Man, I knew that Johnny Depp was set to star in that character's introductory film into the shared universe, but like everything else, I wrote that movie off as being dead in the water, and had no clue that it'd been revived until a month or so before its release. It felt very out of the blue when I did learn about it, but I became curious enough to watch the trailer on YouTube in January of 2020, and was quite impressed with what I saw. It looked as though Universal had finally realized that they needed to stop treating their classic horror legacy as a way to compete with the MCU and just make well-done, standalone, modern updates that didn't require massive budgets or epic scales. What's more, this movie looked scary as hell, perfectly capturing the terror of this concept; I can still remember how tense the scene was where Cecilia dumps some white paint down the attic's trap door and it partially reveals the Invisible Man, and again, that was just in the trailer! Then, when the movie hit in late February, it got both great reviews across the board and made a major killing at the box-office... at least until the COVID-19 lockdown, but still, it did well enough to get Universal interested in more movies like this. I didn't get to see The Invisible Man until late April, when the lockdown was lifted and I was finally able to get back to Chattanooga for the first time in over a month. I bought the 4K/Blu-Ray combo pack at McKay's (I didn't have a 4K TV and player and still don't; it was the only version they had), watched it that week, and when I did, my exact thoughts were, "Now, that's how you do it." Make no mistake, I think this is the best modern update of Universal's classic monsters since the first Stephen Sommers Mummy film. It very effectively tells a simple, terrifying, and fairly emotional story, with a protagonist you root for the whole time and a truly despicable, monstrous villain who, sadly, isn't all that farfetched, save for the invisible part. Speaking of which, the way the invisibility is realized here is a very clever spin, and the visual effects that create it are superb. But, above all else, this movie is almost unbearably tense at points, and takes full advantage of the concept's frightening potential.

In the early morning hours, Cecilia Kass, with the help of her sister, Emily, manages to escape the highly secure home of her controlling, physically and mentally abusive boyfriend, optics specialist Adrian Griffin. She hides out at the home of her friend, SFPD detective James Lanier, and his teenage daughter, Sydney, and doesn't go outside for two weeks. Then, she's visited by Emily, who tells her that Adrian committed suicide. After she reveals to them the depths of Adrian's sociopathy and narcissism, which included attempting to impregnate her to ensure she would never leave, Cecilia receives a letter from Adrian's attorney brother, Tom. To her surprise, she learns that he left her $5 million, income tax free; she, in turn, uses a big chunk of the money to set up a bank account for Sydney's college tuition. However, strange events begin to happen, and Cecilia feels as though she's being watched by an unseen presence in the house. One night, she awakens in the bed she shares with Sydney to find that the comforter has been pulled off, and sees the impression of invisible feet on it when she tries to pull it off the floor. The next day, during a job interview, she opens her portfolio to find its contents missing, then faints. Following a blood test, she later learns that a large amount of the drug, Diazepam, was in her system, the very same drug she used on Adrian during her escape. When she finds the bottle she lost in the bathroom, she takes it as a sign that Adrian faked his death and has found a way to become invisible to torment her, something she says he even threatened her with. Though Tom assures her that she's just haunted by her memories of Adrian's abuse, Cecilia learns that someone sent Emily a hateful email from her account, and Sydney is slapped by an unseen force when she's right in front of Cecilia. Now, both Sydney and James think Cecilia is becoming dangerously unstable. After they leave her in the house alone, Cecilia's suspicions are confirmed, as she's attacked by an invisible man and just barely manages to escape. Making her way back to Adrian's home, she discovers a bodysuit that can, indeed, turn the wearer invisible. But even though she now has proof, the deranged and calculating Invisible Man is intent on getting at Cecilia by attacking her loved ones and destroying her life, unless she returns to him.

Much like The Mummy (both the 1999 and 2017 films), Universal had been trying to do a new version of The Invisible Man for many years before it finally got made. The first attempt was back in 2006, with David S. Goyer, hot off the success of Batman Begins, hired to write the screenplay. However, five years passed with no movement on the project, and by 2011, it seemed dead in the water. Then, of course, came the intended Dark Universe film, with Johnny Depp as the star and Ed Solomon, creator of the Bill & Ted movies, as well as the writer of Men in Black, 2000's Charlie's Angels, and the Now You See Me movies, as screenwriter. But after 2017's The Mummy failed and the Dark Universe died with it, it took a couple of years before The Invisible Man finally got back on track, with Jason Blum coming onboard as producer. Leigh Whannell was hired to both write and direct, and he says that it just happened randomly: "I had just finished Upgrade [his second film as director], they called me in for a meeting with some of these Universal and Blumhouse execs, I go to this meeting, and they didn't really talk about Upgrade. I mean, they said they liked it and they moved on. So, I'm sitting on this couch thinking, 'What am I here for? What is this meeting about?' And they started talking about The Invisible Man."

At the time, I knew Leigh Whannell just as a writer and minor actor, mostly working on movies with James Wan, like Saw (as well as its first two sequels), Dead Silence, and the Insidious movies. I had no idea that he'd made the leap to director, starting with Insidious: Chapter 3 (to this day, I've only seen the first one), and I was only vaguely aware of Upgrade (which I also haven't seen). But from everything I'd heard about The Invisible Man, it seemed as though he proven himself to be more than capable, and when I finally saw it, I realized how right those assessments were. Whannell not only makes fabulous use of a shockingly small budget of $7 million, with some very effective visual effects, but also shows that, despite having started out with the Saw franchise, he knows how to create genuine tension and terror without excessive gore. At this point, he's said to have been attached various other modern updates of the Universal monsters, including a possible sequel to this film. Whatever happens next with him, Whannell is one to watch, for sure.

I don't say this lightly: Elisabeth Moss' performance as Cecilia is Oscar-worthy. You completely buy that this is someone who's been put through the wringer of physical and emotional abuse. The way she carefully and meticulously escapes from Adrian Griffin's very secure and monitored home at the beginning shows that she's both planned this for a long time and yet, is terrified of something going wrong and him finding out. After her escape, you learn she hasn't left her friend's, James Lanier, home for two weeks. He wakes up early one morning to find Cecilia nervously looking out the living room window, and when she goes outside to the mailbox, a passing jogger sends her running back inside in total terror. And when her sister, Emily, comes by, Cecilia is angry at her, fearing that Adrian will follow her. As clear as it already is that being with Adrian was utter hell, when Emily gives her the news that he "committed suicide," Cecilia reveals to Emily and James just how monstrous he was: "He controlled how I looked, and what I wore, and what I ate. And then it was controlling when I left the house, and what I said. And eventually, what I thought. And if he didn't like what he assumed I was thinking, he would..." She hesitates and James asks if Adrian would hit her, to which she answers, "Amongst other things. He wanted to have a baby. And I knew that if we did that, that I... I would never be able to get away from him. So, I took birth control without him knowing it. But, um, that can only go on for so long, so I called you." Thus, Cecilia is surprised as anybody when she learns that Adrian left her $5 million, paid in monthly installments of $100,000 for the next four years. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, she uses most of the money to help James and his daughter, Sydney, first by buying them a new ladder for home maintenance and then by opening a bank account to pay for Sydney's college tuition. But soon, Cecilia starts to get an uneasy feeling that she's being watched, even when it seems as though she's alone in the house. After a terrifying incident late one night in Sydney's bedroom, and after she faints during a job interview, she suspects that Adrian isn't dead and is somehow torturing her without being seen. She finds real proof when a bottle of Diazepam, which she used to drug him when she escaped, appears in her bathroom right after she learns she fainted due to an overdose of it.

Cecilia confronts Adrian's attorney brother, Tom, with this, knowing that Adrian, given his expertise in the field of optics, would be capable of devising a method of becoming invisible. She also tells Tom that Adrian threatened her with this before she escaped: "He said that I could never leave him, that wherever I went, he would find me. That he would walk right up to me, and I wouldn't be able to see him. But he would leave me a sign, so that I'd know he was there." Though Tom tells her this is

just a result of all the mind games and gaslighting Adrian was brilliant at, Cecilia knows she's right. Unfortunately, Adrian begins estranging her from her loved ones, first by sending Emily a horrendous email from Cecilia's account, and then by attacking Sydney in a manner that makes both her and James think Cecilia did it. When she's left alone in the house, she attempts to draw Adrian out, discovering his cellphone, which contains pictures of her sleeping, in the attic, as well as a

knife from the kitchen and the materials missing from her portfolio during the job interview. And then, she gets all the proof she'll ever need when she manages to make him partially visible with some paint, and is then attacked and thrown across the house. After just barely managing to escape, she manages to make her way back to Adrian's house, where she discovers an invisibility suit, possibly a prototype of the one he's currently using. She hides the suit in a secret compartment in the bedroom closet, and after, again, escaping from

Adrian, contacts Emily, telling her to meet up with her at a restaurant. Just as she's about to tell her what's going on, Adrian slits Emily's throat and puts it in Cecilia's hand, making it look as though she murdered her (at first, I thought it was stupid how Cecilia appears to catch the knife, but I now realize that Adrian probably forced it into her hand and she was too shocked to drop it until it was too late). With that, Cecilia is arrested and later sent to a psychiatric hospital, pending trial. There, Adrian continues stalking and eavesdropping on her,

making it impossible for her to prove what's going on to anyone, including James. Then, Tom visits her to tell her that being institutionalized not only forfeits the rest of her inheritance, but that, if she returns to Adrian, he'll have the charges dropped. Worst of all, Cecilia learns that she's pregnant, a result of Adrian learning about her birth control and messing with the pills, and he's using that as a way to blackmail her.

Refusing to accept this, Cecilia acts as though she's going to commit suicide in her cell's shower, and when Adrian attempts to stop her, he falls right into her trap. She manages to damage his suit to where it starts glitching in and out of visibility, and despite some difficulty thanks to the hospital's security team, she pursues him out into the parking lot, firing a gun at him. When he threatens to kill Sydney in retaliation, Cecilia both calls James and chases Adrian to the house. There, she shoots down

the Invisible Man while he's attacking James and Sydney, only to unmask him as Tom instead of Adrian. When Adrian is then found in his house, alive but tied up, everyone assumes that Tom was the one behind it all and Adrian another of his victims... everyone but Cecilia, who knows how cunning Adrian is and that he used his brother as a scapegoat. Intending to get a confession out of him, she goes to see him at his house, wearing a wire, with James listening in his car nearby. She tells him that, if he wants both her and the child in his

life, he needs to admit to everything he did, but he continues to insist it was all Tom's doing. She becomes distraught to the point of tears, especially when he surreptitiously hints at his having been the stalker, and she excuses herself to the bathroom to clean herself up. While waiting for her, Adrian seemingly cuts his own throat, and when Cecilia returns, she screams and calls 911. But then, out of the security camera's sight, she sits down and, watching him bleed out, coldly says, "Surprise." Once he's dead, Cecilia walks out, carrying the invisibility suit she found before, in her bag, and assures James that all that happened was Adrian killed himself.

It's truly amazing how Moss is able to convey Cecilia's arc, going from a battered and traumatized woman who learns her tormentor is still with her and continuing to rule her life, to beaten down when she realizes just how much the odds are stacked against her and, finally, to a fighter who's determined to rid herself of this psychopath once and for all. It's also impressive how Moss is able to convey the idea that she's talking to someone neither she nor anyone else can see, but she knows

is there, like when she's sitting by herself in the house, waiting for Adrian to make his move, and asks him why he's obsessed with her over anyone else, adding that he's already taken everything that he possibly could from her. However, the ending, rather than being cathartic in the notion that Cecilia has finally rid herself of Adrian, if in an unethical way, is rather troubling. Like Adrian did with her, Cecilia manipulates James, insisting when he asks that she intended to get Adrian's confession, but, "I just didn't know he was that unstable." When he's

still unsure, she asks, "You heard it, right? James, what did it sound like to you?" Despite seeing the invisibility suit in her bag, he answers, "It sounded a lot like he killed himself," and lets her go. The last shot is her walking away from the house and towards the camera, with an expression that does express her finally feeling free, but also suggests she's now gripped with power and intends to make further use of the suit.

The film is such an intimate, contained story that the supporting cast is very, very small, with only a small handful of characters. Among them is Detective James Lanier (Aldis Hodge), Cecilia's friend who allows her to stay with him and his teenage daughter, Sydney (Storm Reid), after she escapes from Adrian. Both of them are very supportive of Cecilia, especially James, who tries to encourage her to face her fears and get out of the house more. They're both bowled over by her

generosity when she reveals she's set up a very large bank account to pay for Sydney's college tuition, as the college she's interested in, Parson's School of Design in New York, is way above their pay-grade. But then, Cecilia begins to freak out, claiming that there's someone else in the house. James, at first, thinks she's just paranoid because of Adrian's abuse and hopes it won't affect her life going forward. However, it begins to affect Sydney, who becomes frightened when Cecilia claims someone is in their shared bedroom late at night. The tipping point for them both is when Cecilia, after claiming that Adrian is still alive and has found a way to become invisible, appears to slap Sydney out of nowhere. (You may wonder why Sydney thinks it's Cecilia when the slap comes out of nowhere; it's because Sydney is sitting right in front of her and has her eyes down at the floor at the very moment it occurs.) Now convinced that Cecilia is becoming unstable, James gets Sydney out of the house, telling Cecilia to go find somewhere else to stay. James comes to regret this decision when Cecilia is later charged with murdering her sister and is institutionalized. Between that and her continuing claims that Adrian is invisible and stalking her, he believes he's failed her. Near the end of the movie, when Cecilia calls him to warn him that Adrian is going after Sydney, James, despite the fact that she shouldn't even have access to a phone, heads to the house. There, he comes upon Sydney being attacked by the Invisible Man, who beats the stuffing out of him, and they're both saved when Cecilia comes in and blows the unseen attacker away. Though James believes the initial story that Tom Griffin was behind everything and Adrian was his victim, Cecilia has him listen in when she goes to meet Adrian at his home, wearing a wire. In the end, when Adrian is dead, James, despite knowing full well that Cecilia used one of the invisibility suits to make it look as though he killed himself, decides to keep mum about it.

Cecilia's sister, Emily (Harriet Dyer), aids in her late night escape from Adrian, but doesn't know what's going on, exactly. She gets a hint when Adrian violently attacks the car during the escape, but after his "suicide," she learns just what it was he put her sister through. She accompanies her when she goes to see Tom Griffin for the first time, and shuts it down when Tom reads a statement Adrian left where he attempts to blame Cecilia for everything; then, both of them are shocked when Tom reveals that he left Cecilia a good deal of money. The next time we see Emily, she accuses Cecilia of sending her a nasty email calling her, among other things, "suffocating" (a personality trait that was somewhat hinted at earlier, when Cecilia accused her of always needing to be in control), and tells her that she's not going to bail her out of anything ever again. When Cecilia checks her email account, she sees that the sent message not only told Emily to stay out of her life but also that she wishes she was the one who'd died. Naturally, Emily doesn't believe her when she says it's Adrian's doing, but later on, when Cecilia calls her, asking to meet her at a restaurant at 8:00, she does agree to meet up with her. And when she begins to tell her the truth, Emily does seem willing to listen. But Adrian has other ideas, as he quickly slashes her throat and frames Cecilia as the murderer. (According to Leigh Whannell, a lot of people, strangely, thought Emily's name was actually "Alice." I don't know where they could've gotten that.)

In all of the previous well-known takes on The Invisible Man, the title character himself is our protagonist and we're following him as he becomes gripped with power and commits his various heinous acts. This film, however, is undoubtedly Cecilia's story, whereas the Invisible Man, Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), is mainly a menacing presence and a faceless, ethereal villain, both figuratively and literally, until the final scene. Before then, all we know about Adrian is what we learn from Cecilia, in her recollections of all he did to her, her sheer terror at how he's still stalking her as a virtual ghost, and the horrible acts he commits while invisible. We don't get that good of a look at him during the opening, but his obsessive, sociopathic control over Cecilia is made clear through how secure and monitored his house is, Cecilia's attempt to escape being as quiet and careful as possible, and the way he violently and insanely tries to stop her from driving off with Emily. Then, for the majority of the movie, he uses his invisibility to isolate Cecilia, estranging her from those who could protect her, as well as terrorize her and even go as far as to murder Emily and frame Cecilia for it. He continues stalking and eavesdropping on her when she's committed to the psychiatric hospital, making it impossible for her to divulge her proof of what's happening to those who could help her. When she manages to get the drop on him and damages his invisibility suit to where it begins glitching, he, at one point, tells her, "You think you're learning how to beat me, so I'm going to truly teach you something. If you fight me, I won't ever hurt you. I'll find someone you love and hurt them instead. Now you've only got yourself to blame for that innocent young girl's death." Cecilia realizes he's threatening Sydney, and she rushes to the house to save her, as well as James when he gets attacked. But then, it's revealed that the Invisible Man in that instance was Adrian's brother, Tom, while Adrian himself is found tied up in a hidden room his house's basement. While this could cause you to have even the slightest doubt and think that Tom was behind everything, when Cecilia goes to see Adrian, that goes away in how he insists it was all Tom's doing, telling her, "I'm giving you exactly what you're asking for, Cecilia. I am telling you the truth... I know that you feel like you're going insane sometimes, but I'm the only one who can help you. Remember? Because I know you better than anyone else in the world. I mean, that shouldn't come as a surprise."

As Cecilia told James and Emily early on, Adrian is just as brilliant in the field of optics as he is at mind-games and manipulation. He had to have had this plan in place long before Cecilia left him, as she says he even once subtly alluded to it, and clearly only created the invisibility suit for this very purpose. It's both a travesty and pathetic that this guy is as brilliant as he is and yet, uses his smarts as a way to stalk and destroy his girlfriend's life because she had the audacity to leave him. Like

most narcissists, the fact that she did that is driving him crazy, with Tom even telling her, "He needs you because you don't need him. No one's ever left him before," and all of this terrorizing and isolating was his way of punishing her. Once he's driven her to the lowest point by having her accused of murdering Emily and committed to a psychiatric hospital before her trial, he has Tom deliver his ultimatum: return to him and he'll see to it that all the charges are dropped. You might think this

would prove disastrous for him legally, given how it would be revealed that an important man like him faked his death, but considering his wealth and power, he likely has the connections to make it all work out for him. But, most horrific of all, Adrian was attempting to impregnate Cecilia as the ultimate way of control, and found out she was using birth control pills and swapped them out with something else. Now that she is pregnant, he's using that as the ultimate bargaining chip. Though he does stop her when she feigns attempting to

commit suicide, he really only sees the baby as a means to an end, as he often attacks her in a manner that could cause her to miscarriage. And when Cecilia proves to be stronger than he may have anticipated, Adrian not only threatens her loved ones but sets up Tom as the scapegoat, while he acts as though he'd been taken prisoner by him all along. To the very end, he continues trying to manipulate Cecilia back into his life, making himself out to be innocent and feigning vulnerability, while also subtly hinting that he was

behind all, confident that she can never prove it. But, again, he underestimates her, as she uses the prototype invisibility suit she found and hid in the bedroom closet to make it seem as though he killed himself. As he bleeds to the death, she coldly watches him, and says, "Surprise," which he often used in some way while tormenting her. The look of hatred and shock on his face before he dies speaks volumes.

Instead of the traditional serum, here the Invisible Man is created through a kind of special bodysuit that's fitted with hundreds of tiny cameras, possibly projecting imagery of the environment around them to create the illusion of invisibility (I hate to make this comparison, but it does seem to work on the same principle as James Bond's invisible car in Die Another Day). However it works, I thought it was an interesting and effective update on the concept. These suits also seem to give their 

wearers enhanced strength, given how, when Tom wears it while attacking James and Sydney, he seems to be much stronger and tougher than his small frame would suggest, and also how easily Cecilia is able to grab Adrian's arm and slit his own throat, despite Adrian clearly being a strong man in and of himself. Moreover, they prove to be quite durable and protective, as Adrian doesn't take much injury from his rough fights with Cecilia, and she has to shoot Tom four times to finally put him down. But the suits aren't invulnerable, as Cecilia

is able to damage Adrian's by stabbing it repeatedly with a pen, causing it to glitch, and like in past Invisible Man movies, materials like paint can adhere to it, making the wearer visible (however, water doesn't seem to create a silhouette around the wearer's figure, as is normally the case). Above all else, though, the image of this faceless, totally black, humanoid form, covered in hundreds of small, clicking cameras that sometimes come off as eyes, is quite a creepy one.

The first two times you see him, Tom Griffin (Michael Dorman), Adrian's lawyer brother, comes off as a detached and somewhat insensitive but, ultimately, sympathetic character. Saying he's obligated to fulfill his brother's final wishes in person, he reads a statement from Adrian that makes Cecilia out to be the bad guy, which Emily puts a stop to. He also bitterly mentions how so many women became attached to Adrian because of his money, insinuating that Cecilia is no different, but still tells her of the money she's getting, though he adds it becomes forfeit under certain conditions. Later, when she's sure that Adrian is still alive and stalking her, she confronts Tom about it, telling him to make him stop. When she suggests he's found a way to become invisible, Tom tells her, "Adrian was brilliant, but it wasn't because of anything he invented. It was how he got in people's heads. That was his true genius: knowing people's weaknesses. You think about it. He came up with the perfect way to torture you, even in death. The only thing more brilliant than inventing something that makes you invisible is not inventing it, but making you think he did. My brother controlled me long before he met you, Cecilia. I hated him. You and I, we got that in common. I was relieved... when I heard that he was dead. He's gone, Cecilia. I saw his body. Listen to me: don't let him win by bringing him back to life." But that all changes when, after she's institutionalized, Tom visits her and tells her that, as a result, she's not getting any more money. Moreover, he disingenuously adds, "I know that you set up a bank account for a friend of yours to go to college, so I take no pleasure in relaying that." To that, Cecilia comments, "I used to feel sorry for you. The blood relative of a narcissist sociopath. Permanent punching bag. Handcuffed to his wallet. But now I can see you for what you really are. You're just the jellyfish version of him. Everything but the spine."

And as if you didn't think Tom was enough of a scumbag, he reveals he's in on Adrian's plan and has been helping him. After giving her the option to sign a document to forfeit her shares, he then quietly tells her, "Or there's one option where this all goes away: agree to have the baby, and go back to him. You really think he didn't know you were secretly using birth control? Of course he did. You should've known he'd find out. You knew him as well as I did. He replaced them with something

else. You only thought you were taking birth control pills. He was always going to find you, no matter what he had to do... He's punished you enough now. Now that he knows you're the mother of his child. It's time to stop playing games. A new life with him can be given to you with one phone call. A life just like your old one with Adrian. Cecilia, you don't really have a choice right now. Right now, you're a murderer. But I can change that." Distraught and enraged at this, Cecilia throws Tom's documents to the floor, accusing him of helping Adrian murder Emily. Unbeknownst to Tom, she takes one of his pens and later uses it in the fake suicide attempt to trap Adrian. Whatever his motives were for going along with his brother, Tom is also not above getting his own hands dirty, as he wears one of the invisibility suits and uses it to attack Sydney and James under Adrian's orders. Unbeknownst to him, Adrian was setting him up to take the fall for his crimes.

Although it takes place in California, the movie was shot almost entirely in New South Wales, Australia, with some pick-ups and reshoots done in London and Toronto; according to its shooting locations page on IMDB, only the main titles and the very first shot were actually done in the U.S., in Palos Verdes, Los Angeles (there are some shots of the Golden Gate Bridge, but with CGI cars driving it). Learning that was a real surprise, as James and Sydney's house and the surrounding neighborhood are especially convincing as a small suburb near

San Francisco. According to Leigh Whannell, such a place was quite hard to find in New South Wales, with an American mailbox even needing to be brought over. What's more, after Cecilia escapes from Adrian's home, she runs to a country road, with pine trees all around... which aren't native to Australia. They had to shoot that scene at a plantation where they're grown for Christmas trees and such, and the fact that it was late at night was what made it look as good as it does. In any case,

getting back to the Lanier household, it looks just as typical on the inside as it does outside, with the dark attic being the only overtly creepy space. That makes the scenes where Cecilia is being stalked and watched by the Invisible Man all the more unsettling, as it's a violation of an environment that should be comfortable and, above all else, safe. The same goes for when Emily is murdered at the posh restaurant, as that's also an environment where you would never think you'd be in danger. Aside from Adrian's house, the only truly discomforting settings are Tom's white, sterile law office, and the cold, clinical interiors of the psychiatric hospital Cecilia finds herself in during the third act.

The most ominous setting is Adrian's home, which sits on a cliff overlooking the ocean. On the outside, which was shot at a place in Gerringong called Headland House, it just looks off-putting, with sections that jut out, a U-shaped exterior corridor with stairs leading down to the entrance to the dining room, and a very long, stone wall and gate that seals off the property from the outside. The interiors, most of which were shot at Pepple Cove Farm in Kiama, have some lovely rooms, such as the dining room, Adrian's bedroom

(actually a living room in a Sydney home), and even the bathroom, and a lot of large windows, but at the same time, the way the sunlight illuminates their dull coloring and the modern architecture makes the place feel cold and oppressive. Also, their sheer openness, as a result of those windows, is really uncomfortable, as it can make you feel exposed and vulnerable. That's not even getting to the laboratory and testing area where Adrian does all of his design work, with the prototype

invisibility suit kept within a key-code-accessed space separate from the rest of the lab. This room is also where he can access his formidable security system, with cameras monitoring every room and a code-activated alarm system. Even his downstairs garage feels cold and clinical, thanks to its blue-white lighting system. And his poor Doberman pinscher, Zeus, has a shock collar around his neck, yet another sign of Adrian's control obsession.

Whannell's shooting and direction show a real technical skill and very adept filmmaking. For one thing, the movie just looks good, with the color palette and grading creating a real distinction between the warm, comfortable interiors of the Lanier house (those scenes kind of remind me of how the interiors often look in David Fincher's movies) and that cold, uncomfortable feel of places like Tom's office, the psychiatric hospital, and Adrian's house. Speaking of the latter, the final scene in his dining room is shot in a sort of

romantic vibe, in stark contrast to the way his house always seemed before, hinting at how he's trying to lure Cecilia back into his life. Although Whannell told his cinematographer, Stefan Duscio, that there were going to be a lot of brightly-lit scenes in the film, much to Duscio's chagrin, there are a fair amount within the Lanier house that are eerily dark. Chief among them is when Cecilia wakes up in the middle of the night to find that her and Sydney's bedspread has been removed, and when she goes up into the attic, the latter of which

they lit only with her flashlight. And the exterior nighttime scenes and moments, like after Cecilia escapes from Adrian's house, are creepily dark as well. But the best testament to Whannell's talent is the way he suggests the Invisible Man's presence without having him do much of anything, if at all. You not only have eerie angles that suggest he's watching, such as this angle from around a corner, looking down the hallway at the living room, as Cecilia, James, and Sydney celebrate how the latter

is going to college, and slowly roving camera shots that could also possibly be from his perspective, but big, wide shots, with a lot of empty space around the characters, suggesting he could be standing somewhere nearby, watching and listening. Sometimes, the camera will pan away from someone and linger on something else, or it will remained fixed in those wide shots, making you anxious and looking for something. A perfect example is when, while Cecilia is cooking

breakfast, she goes to wake up Sydney, and the camera stays fixed on the kitchen, until the stove eye is gradually cranked up to where the food in the frying pan bursts into flames (very similar to a number of scenes in the Paranormal Activity movies). Moreover, when she first walks away, she unknowingly knocks a knife off the counter... but you don't hear it hit the floor. Namely, it's the knife she later finds up in the attic. And there are nervous and shaky angles from Cecilia's POV when she's looking around, searching for some sign of the Invisible Man.

The original 1933 film did a good job of portraying the fear and paranoia that would come from having to contend with someone who's both invisible and cunning, though it was mostly from the authorities' point of view and the film was often just as funny as it was suspenseful. This film, however, takes full advantage of the concept's frightening potential, with sequences that capture that eerie feeling we've all had when we've been at home by ourselves and yet, feel like someone's watching us. Right after that shot where their celebration is seemingly being

spied on, Cecilia is in a room alone, removing some new clothes she just bought, when she suddenly turns and nervously looks around the room, feeling very anxious. Naturally, she doesn't see anything, but Elisabeth Moss' performance, coupled with one of those eerie camera pans, makes you think the Invisible Man may be in there, watching her. A couple of scenes later, she's in the house alone at night, and the camera is looking down the hallway towards the dark living room. You hear the sound of the front door gently

opening and closing, followed by the floorboards creaking and soft footsteps coming down the hall, with the camera panning to the doorway of another room, where Cecilia is sitting on a couch, working on her laptop (like I am right now [shudders]). She then stops and looks at the doorway leading into the hall, again with the feeling that she's not alone. She calls for James, but gets no answer, and slowly walks out of the room and down the hallway, towards the living room. She quickly walks in

there, looks around in the dark, flips on a light, then walks over to the kitchen and flips on its light. (Admit it, we've all done this at some point, especially when it's late at night and we're alone.) The camera stays on her for much of this scene, eventually panning around to her front, as she hears the front door slowly creak open behind her. She goes outside and stands in the front yard, in the cold, looking down the street. This leads into the moment seen in the trailers and TV spots, where she lets out a breath, and you see another poof of breath come from behind her head. She nervously looks behind her, through the open doorway, and quickly slips back into the house.

The following scene is when it's the dead of night, and Cecilia and Sydney are in bed, when the bedspread is slowly pulled off them. Cecilia is awoken by a few flashes of light (which we later learn is Adrian taking pictures of them), and gets a fright when, in the dark, a coat and hat rack looks like someone standing there. She then gets out of bed, finds the spread, and after hearing something, looks behind her and focuses on a chair, as does the camera. This strongly suggests there's an unseen person sitting in it, and she throws the spread over

it to see if it reveals anything. It doesn't, and she breathes a sigh of relief. But when she pulls the spread back onto the bed, it appears to get snagged on something. She looks down and sees the impression of invisible feet on the edge of it. When she sees the footprints moving towards her, she freaks out and screams for James. But when he rushes in, he can't find anything. The creepiest example of the Invisible Man's stalking is when Cecilia is showering, she gets out, answers a

phone-call, and learns from a blood test that she fainted at her job interview due to a large amount of Diazepam in her system... right before she finds the very bottle of it she lost in her escape on the kitchen sink. The idea that the Invisible Man was watching her shower is especially chilling.

What makes this all the more unsettling is that the movie puts it in context with the real-world issue of domestic abuse and stalking. While you or I may not have directly experienced it (at least, I hope none of you ever have), it is, sadly, an all too common occurrence: someone is trapped in a relationship with a controlling, possessive, and violent partner, and when they break up with or leave them, the person begins stalking them and mercilessly terrorizing them (a family member of mine went through this for many years). Even

worse, this type of crime is often hard to concretely prove to where the police will do anything, and it can affect those close to the one being abused. Even though this is a science-fiction/horror movie, the scenes where we see the terror and paranoia Cecilia's experiences with Adrian have instilled in her, her describing what life with him was like, and the hopelessness she often feels when she realizes he's still after and she can't make anyone believe her, are sadly real. It just cranks the whole thing  

up by showing how the ability to become invisible would be the ultimate power fantasy for this type of deranged person, as their victim would be almost completely helpless and unable to prove or do anything about it. It gets to a core theme of the Invisible Man concept, which is how this kind of power can lead to someone losing their inhibitions and any sense of morality they may have (not that Adrian had any to begin with), emphasized all the more by those last few moments with Cecilia.

While the movie succeeds with flying colors when it employs the "less is more" approach, it's just as effective whenever the Invisible Man needs to be in action. Sometimes, the filmmakers made use of simple, old school techniques, like pulling open and shutting doors with pieces of string or having somebody pull something from just off-camera, but other times, they would have someone in a green suit that would be digitally removed later. This might sound simple enough, but the big fight and chase scenes between Cecilia and the Invisible

Man, like in the Lanier house's kitchen and at the psychiatric hospital, were actually quite complicated to pull off due to how much in the scene would be moving and how often they happen over minutes-long, continuous shots. They would often use a combination of techniques, from the stuntmen in the green suits to pulling Elisabeth Moss around on wires, and would shoot with robotic camera systems that would make the compositing easier. These more elaborate visual

effects come off really well, both when Cecilia is fighting an unseen force and when the Invisible Man is partially visible, either when she throws paint on him or damages the suit, and when he's holding something, like a knife or a gun. And while we're on the subject of effects, while the movie is not a gore-fest at all, there are a couple of impressive throat slashes and some other minute blood effects, such as squibs, here and there.

The Invisible Man is tense right from the opening where, after the credits, Cecilia's eyes snap open as she lies in bed with Adrian. Looking at the clock on the nightstand and seeing that it's 3:42 AM, she slowly removes his hand from around her waist, gets out of bed, and removes a bottle of Diazepam she had hidden beneath the mattress. She walks over to Adrian's side of the bed, quietly says his name, and then looks at the half-empty glass of water on his nightstand, which contains much of

the dissolved drug within it. After he rolls over on his side in his sleep, she creeps into the bathroom across from his bed, pours out the rest of the water, and keeps an eye on his reflection in the large mirror in front of her. He never stirs, and she removes a bag of clothes and other items from a secret compartment in the closet. She sneaks out into the hallway and uses a small step-stool to reach and turn a security camera towards Adrian. She looks at the feed, which is connected to her

I-phone, and zooms in on Adrian's face, to see that he's still asleep. She then slips down the hallway and into his laboratory, where she deactivates all of the security cameras in the house, save for the one monitoring Adrian's bedroom. She also manages to disable the alarm system. Before leaving, she glances at a spot in the lab that appears to be empty, despite a device clearly meant for holding something in place. She then makes her way through the house, trying to be quiet, although she accidentally hits a dog's food bowl with her foot

when she enters the kitchen. Terrified, she checks the feed on her I-phone, but sees that Adrian's still asleep. She puts some pants and a sweater on over her nightgown and heads downstairs, into the garage. She's about to run out the open door, when she turns to see the dog, Zeus, watching her. She tells him that she can't take him with her, but when he whines pitifully, she goes and removes a shock collar from around his neck. As she fumbles with it, Zeus bumps against a car next to him, setting off the alarm. Once the collar is off him, he runs into

the night, and Cecilia herself quickly runs across the grounds and towards the stone wall around the property. She climbs up its side and over the top, as the light in Adrian's bedroom switches on. Once she reaches the other side, she runs through the woods, often looking over her shoulder.

She reaches a country road beyond the trees, but becomes frightened when she doesn't see Emily waiting for her. She looks around frantically for her, then turns when she hears something behind her and shines her flashlight into the woods. She doesn't see anything, and she's relieved when she turns around to see Emily's car approaching. So anxious is she to get away that she can't wait for Emily to reach her. She runs to her, throws her bag into the backseat, and then gets in the passenger

side up front; in her scrambling, she doesn't realize that she drops her bottle of Diazepam. She tells Emily that she'll explain later, when Adrian comes running to the door behind her, smacks against the window, and screams at her to open the door. This tells Emily all she needs to know, and she becomes as frightened as Cecilia when Adrian punches right through the window and grabs her, all while screaming at the top of his lungs. Emily drives forward, forcing Adrian to let go, but he chases after them for a few feet before they get out of his

reach. He stands in the middle of the road, screaming at Cecilia to come back, saying she can't do this. He then watches them drive off and, spying the bottle on the road, walks over to it and picks it up with his bloody hand.

After the initial instances of the Invisible Man terrorizing Cecilia, the next major sequence comes after she realizes he's used her email account to send Emily nasty messages and put a wedge between them. When Sydney is suddenly slapped and thinks that Cecilia did it, she tries to explain but James isn't having it. He leaves the house with Sydney, telling Cecilia that she needs to find somewhere else to stay. Once she's alone, Cecilia challenges Adrian to come out of hiding, then

grabs a butcher knife from the kitchen. Spying some coffee grounds, she grabs them, pours them over the floor of a room with only one door, and sits down, with her eyes glued to the doorway, waiting for Adrian to make his move. Time passes, and nothing happens. After she asks Adrian why he's so obsessed with her, she gets an idea and crawls over to a table by a sofa. She grabs a phone and dials his cellphone number. As it rings over the line, she hears the sound of the phone's vibration

mode buzzing, and gradually realizes it's coming from up above her, in the attic. She then uses the new ladder she bought for James to reach the attic's trap door, carrying with her a flashlight and the phone. After standing on the ladder's top step and scanning the attic with the flashlight, she climbs up into it. Searching around for Adrian's cellphone, she dials it again, and finds it when it lights up and buzzes loudly. Moving over to it, she checks it and finds it contains pictures of her and Sydney sleeping. Next to it is a butcher knife in a ziplock

bag, and the materials that disappeared from her portfolio during her job interview. Adrian's phone buzzes again and Cecilia checks it to see that it received a text from an unknown number that simply reads, "SURPRISE." She's startled when she hears something behind her, and quickly grabs the knife and makes her way back over to the door. She slowly creeps over the edge and looks down. While she doesn't see anything, she has a feeling that this is a case where appearances deceive. That's when she grabs a paint and dumps the paint

down through the hatch, where it coats an unseen humanoid form. She quickly backs away in terror, and hears a lot of clattering down below. Carefully, she makes her way back over to the door, and looks down to see that the ladder has fallen, and that there's paint all over the floor.

Tossing the knife down first, Cecilia manages to drop down to the floor without hurting herself, then grabs the knife and follows a paint trail leading down the hallway. It ends right before the living room and she sneaks towards it, looking around the corner into the dining room, then out the living room's window when a car drives by. Suddenly, there's a loud sound in the kitchen, followed by that of running water. Walking slowly towards it, she sees that the sink is on, and when she gets close,

that the bottom of it is coated with rinsed off paint. She turns off the faucet and turns back around, when she's grabbed, lifted off the floor, forced to drop the knife, and slammed against the wall. She's dragged along the floor by her legs and forced down. She swings punches at thin air, then grabs at a drawer, removes a dustpan from it, and swings it. She manages to knock the Invisible Man off her, but when she tries to crawl away, he grabs her and throws her across a nearby table. She slides right

across it and lands behind the other end, after which the table is knocked out of the way. Clutching her stomach, Cecilia looks around frantically, when she's grabbed by her hair, forced onto her back, and dragged along the floor again. She grabs onto one of the upturned table's legs, but she's wrenched from it by her own legs and dragged into the kitchen. Again, she grabs and punches at the air, then grabs some plates from some shelves and manages to smash them against the Invisible Man. This forces him to let go, and

she runs out the front door, across the yard, and into the street, not knowing if he's chasing her. Once she's far away from the house, she calls for an Uber ride. Her ride shows up quite quickly (they're never that fast) and she climbs into the backseat. She tells the driver to lock the doors and has him head to Adrian's house. Though it's far away, the driver complies with her request and they drive off.

By morning, they arrive at Adrian's home. Cecilia tells the driver to wait for her, while she goes in and "gets something." She makes her way onto the grounds and heads to the house's main door, where she punches in the entry code. Walking down the hallway, she sees a sheet-covered figure in an alcove at the end of it, and is obviously nervous that it might be him, though it turns out to be just a statue. Looking around the empty house, with the furniture covered in plastic, Cecilia is surprised

when Zeus runs up to her. She heads back down to the lab and switches on the lights, while Zeus stays at the top of the stairs, whining nervously. Approaching the seemingly empty spot she noticed during her escape, she attempts to access it through the key panel. After two failed attempts, she punches in the date that she and Adrian first met, and it opens, to which she disgustedly says, "So romantic." She walks in, puzzled by how the black stand in there appears to be empty, then notices a

panel on the wall to her left, which is receiving a camera feed from something right in front of her. Reaching out and touching something that she can't see, she walks to the panel, moves the image on it, then presses a symbol in the lower-right corner that says, "MODE." A loud sound startles her, and as she watches, the black bodysuit, with the hundreds of tiny cameras, slowly materializes. Once it's completely visible, she removes the mask to find it's fitted onto a black mannequin. Suddenly, Zeus starts barking, looking back up into the house.

Knowing what it means, she quickly removes the suit. A roving camera shot through the hallways, accompanied by the slightly creaking floor, indicates that the Invisible Man is there. Cecilia runs into Adrian's bedroom and quietly ducks into the closet, hiding the suit in the compartment where she hid her duffel-bag before. The Invisible Man approaches the closet, and Cecilia hides on the wall next to the door, peeking through the crack. It slowly slides open, and after a few seconds of silence, she sees his footprint impress

itself in the floor. She then attempts to tackle him to the floor, but slides and scrambles across it, not sure where he is. Zeus comes to her rescue, barking at the Invisible Man and backing him away, while Cecilia beats a hasty retreat and escapes with the Uber driver.

Cecilia contacts Emily and gets her to agree to meet her at the restaurant at 8:00 that night. When they do, Cecilia, making sure that she does so out of their waiter's earshot, starts to tell Emily what she found at Adrian's home. Before she can go into the details, Emily looks off to the side, seeing a knife apparently floating in midair right next to Cecilia. Within a flash, her throat is sliced open, the knife placed into Cecilia's hand, who watches in shock as her sister bleeds out and collapses on

the table, and a woman at the table to their right sees what's happened and screams. Everyone around Cecilia sees Emily dead and her holding the bloody knife, and when she gets up and staggers backwards, it registers that everyone thinks she murdered her. She drops the knife, screams in anguish, and is then forced down to the floor by the waiters, while the police arrive and handcuff her. In the next scene, she's pulled down the hallway in a psychiatric hospital and into a cell, where she's forced onto a cot and strapped to it. She screams

frantically, saying she didn't do it, and, looking towards the door and knowing that the Invisible Man is there, screams, "You motherfucker! You killed her! I see you! I see you!" She tries to tell the orderlies strapping her to the cot that he's there, but her pleas fall on deaf ears, as she's promptly sedated by the doctor. As she loses consciousness, she watches everyone walk out of the room, leaving her in there "alone." Before she passes out, she hears Adrian's voice say, "Surprise."

Upon learning of her pregnancy and Adrian's conditions for her, the climax begins when Cecilia, after seeing a weather report of upcoming heavy rainfall, gets an idea. In her cell, after being left alone for the evening, she walks into the shower stall, takes a pen she took from Tom out of its hiding place in there, and rips off the head, exposing the sharp point beneath it. She turns on the water and says aloud, "You won't get the baby, and you won't get me." She drives the pen into her

arm and proceeds to drive it down, like she's slitting her wrist. Before she can go really deep, the Invisible Man grabs her arm... just as she wanted. Exclaiming, "There you are!", she stabs the pen into him, damaging his suit, then slams him against the wall across from the shower and next to the door. She stabs him repeatedly, yelling, "Fuck you!" He kicks her away, slamming her against the side of the cot, when a security guard walks in, hearing the commotion. He orders Cecilia to get

back in bed, when he looks to his right and sees the humanoid figure glitching in and out of visibility. The man pulls out his taser, but the Invisible Man grabs his wrist, slams him against the wall, and tasers him right in the neck. The guard collapses to the floor, and Cecilia takes her chance. She runs for the door, knocking the Invisible Man aside, and heads out into the hallway. She runs into two more security guards down the hall, and gets knocked to the floor. They grab her when she tries to crawl

away, pull her up, and drag her back down the hall. She tries to warn them, as sees the Invisible Man approaching. They see him right when he's in front of them, and he grabs the one guard and bangs her head against the wall, while knocking her partner out as well. Three more security guards come running, but the Invisible Man tackles one to the floor and slams another's head into a window to his right. The third guard pulls out his handgun, points it at Cecilia, and tells her to lay down on the floor. Cecilia tries to warn him of the Invisible Man's

presence and the guard, shockingly skeptical, even after what he just witnessed, does still look around himself cautiously. After he turns completely around, his hand is grabbed, the gun pointed at his right knee, and it fires through it, splattering blood on the wall. He screams in pain, but is knocked out with an invisible punch. When yet another pair of security guards come running and pull their weapons, one of them is knocked to the floor, while the other has his hand wrenched and is slammed against the wall. The Invisible Man takes

his gun and points it at the frightened guard, who puts his hands up. He playfully says, "Bang!", then walks behind the guard and shoots him. He drops the gun and runs out through the fire exit, with Cecilia, wielding another handgun, in hot pursuit.

She fires at him as he makes his way down the fire escape's steps, missing him and hitting the wall. She chases him down to the bottom and through a door leading into another hallway. Following his trail, she sees him escape through the main door and out into the parking lot. Telling those at the security station to stay back, she runs outside, into the pouring rain, and fires when she sees him briefly glitch over by the cars. Again, she misses, and follows him into the lot. She ducks down and

scrambles about the vehicles, turning the gun on every corner she comes across. Things are made worse when she hears the rest of the security team searching for her, and she looks under the vehicle to her right, but finds no sign of him. With the guards searching the parking lot for her, she comes across a car with the door to the backseat open. She swings around the corner and points her gun inside it, but finds no sign of him. Then, as she looks straight ahead, he suddenly materializes in front of

her. He quickly grabs her by the throat and slams her up against the side of an EMT vehicle, which is when he threatens to kill Sydney. A guard comes around the corner of a vehicle nearby and shines his light on them. After ordering them to raise their hands, the Invisible Man takes Cecilia's gun and fires on him. He drops to the ground and watches as the Invisible Man, still glitching, approaches him. All he does is kick away the guard's own dropped gun and walk off. Cecilia walks over, takes the gun, and runs after the Invisible Man,

exposing herself to the other guards. She sees him go through a door leading out of the parking lot and runs out into the street. Initially, it seems as though she's lost him, when an SUV comes barreling towards her. She fires on the vehicle, only for it to swerve to her side and slam into the back of a parked car in front of her. She rushes to it, as the dazed and battered driver stumbles out. She quickly commandeers the vehicle, tells the man's wife, who was talking with him on his cellphone, that he's fine, and heads down the road.

As she rushes to the house, Cecilia calls James and warns him that Sydney's in danger over there. At the house, the Invisible Man enters through the dining room's French windows and heads down the hall towards Sydney's bedroom door, which is slightly ajar. She's asleep in bed, but wakes up with a start, sensing someone in the room. Seeing that the door's open, she grabs her can of mace from her bag by the bed, and sprays it in midair. Amazingly, she manages to tag the Invisible Man, who slams against a table below her mirror. She screams and

runs out of the room and into the hallway, but is grabbed from behind and flung down to the floor. James arrives outside and enters through the front door, with his gun drawn. He calls for Sydney, then looks around the corner and sees her lying on the floor, apparently being choked. He flips the light on, but when he approaches her, the Invisible Man attacks. He knocks James to the floor, kicks the gun out of his hand, then slams him against the wall and kicks him in the head. James manages to kick him away, and crawls for his gun, but the

Invisible Man grabs him by the leg and drags him back. As Sydney screams in terror, James is punched repeatedly, blood splattering on the wall to his right, then the Invisible Man pulls him up by his shirt collar, with James lightly swinging at the air, and lays him out with one last, hard punch. He pulls him up again by his necktie, but lets him go when he sees he's out cold. Before he can attack Sydney, Cecilia runs in with a fire extinguisher and blasts him, making him partially visible (the CO2

from fire extinguishers wouldn't actually adhere to something that way, but whatever). She then pulls out her gun and shoots him repeatedly, emptying the rest of the clip into him. Despite four bleeding bullet-holes in his chest, and his suit glitching out, the Invisible Man staggers down the hall towards her, walking over James, before collapsing at the end of it. While Sydney helps her dad, Cecilia walks over to the figure and removes the mask, only to find Tom's face behind it instead of

Adrian's. Cut to the early morning hours, where a SWAT team enters Adrian's home. They make their way down to the basement, when they hear someone yelling for help behind a wall. They break through it and find Adrian in the back of this hidden space, his hands tied together.

Sure that that scene was just another part of Adrian's plan to make her come back to him, Cecilia decides to take matters into her own hands and contacts him. She goes to see him one night, and finds him waiting for her in the doorway to the dining room. There, with his security cameras watching, and James listening in from his police car thanks to the wire she's secretly wearing, Cecilia tries to get Adrian to tell the truth and confess everything he did to her. But when he doesn't and insists it was all Tom's doing, while

also surreptitiously hinting that he was, in fact, behind it all, she excuses herself to go clean up the tears she's shed. Some time passes, and Adrian sits at one end of the dining table, looking at the empty chair across from him. Suddenly, he hears something, and his right hand, which is holding a knife, wrenches up and slices open his neck, all in view of the security camera (as security footage of Cecilia running from James' house was used against her when she arrested, it's now used against Adrian). Blood pours out of his neck and he

collapses to the floor, grabbing the profusely bleeding wound and gagging, when Cecilia walks back in and screams. As James listens, she grabs a cellphone and calls 911, saying that Adrian has tried to kill himself; hearing this, James removes his headphones, gets out of the car, and bolts down the road. Cecilia gives the operator the address, while moving out of the security camera's sight, and once she hangs up, she stops crying. That's when she sits down and lets Adrian, in his last

moments, know that she just turned the tables on him, using his own technology. After glaring at her, he rolls over onto his back, lets go of his wound, and expires. She walks out of the house, along with Zeus, meeting James when he comes running in, and assures him that she's fine and Adrian killed himself. That's when he notices the folded up invisibility suit in the bag she's carrying, but she manages to convince him that, as far as they're both concerned, Adrian did kill himself and he lets her go.

The score is by Benjamin Wallfisch, who's done the music for films such as Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation, both of the It theatrical films, and Neil Marshall's Hellboy, and also worked with Hans Zimmer on Blade Runner 2049. His work for The Invisible Man was, according to him, meant as a tribute to Bernard Herrmann's work on Psycho, where he used only strings. Wallfisch did take a similar approach, but also used a lot of electronic, synthesizer music for the more horrific and action-packed sequences, while the strings were for the more emotional parts of the score, specifically Cecilia's trauma over Adrian's constant disruption of her life. Those electronic aspects are very, very unnerving, as they have a harsh, jagged feel to them that makes the movie come off as all the more nightmarish, while the more emotional pieces, like when Cecilia first escapes from Adrian and at the very end, when she's killed him and is walking free, despite the fact that she's committed murder, has a tragic, almost Howard Shore sound to them. It also hints at that uncertainty of the ending, of the suggestion that she may now be compelled to use the invisibility suit for her own, personal gain. All in all, it's the kind of score that doesn't have those really memorable themes and leitmotifs that will stick with you afterward, but in the moment, it works perfectly.

In his updating of The Invisible Man for modern audiences, Leigh Whannell created a template that we can only hope Universal follows in any other attempts to do the same for their other classic horror properties. From top to bottom, this movie is excellent: the acting is great all-around, especially from Elisabeth Moss; it's effectively well-made, from how Whannell made Australia look like California to the way he uses his camerawork and framing to suggest the Invisible Man's presence;

the visual effects used to bring him to life are superb, both in their full digital glory and when they used very old school tricks; the music score manages to be both tense and yet emotional; and, above all else, it's very suspenseful and frightening, and the inclusion of stalking and domestic abuse themes make it all the more palpable. It's a movie that I have no issues with at all, and think is one of the best horror movies that Universal has produced since the Millennium. If you haven't seen it, you seriously owe it to yourself, especially if you're a fan of the 1933 original.