THE INVISIBLE MAN : Tuesday 3rd March 2020.

'THE INVISIBLE MAN' which I saw at my local multiplex this week is an MA15+ Rated American and Australian Co-Produced supernatural horror film Directed, written for the screen and based on a story by the Australian Screenwriter, Producer, Actor and film maker Leigh Whannel. This is a modern updated retelling of the classic H.G.Wells story and the 1933 film version both of the same name. Filmed here in Sydney, Australia, this film has been in development since 2007 and in 2016 the project was announced to have been resurrected as part of Universal Studios shared cinematic universe consisting of their classic monster characters, but when 'The Mummy' was released in 2017 to poor press and less than favourable Box Office takings the studio halted all of its projects sitting in development. Subsequently the studio revised its plans, and this film was back on track. Costing US$7M to make, the film was released Stateside last week too, has so far grossed US$56M and has generated positive Critical acclaim. In November 2019, it was announced that a spin-off film centered around the female counterpart to Invisible Man was in development. Elizabeth Banks will star in, Direct, and Produce an adaptation of 'The Invisible Woman', based on her own original pitch it seems, as distinct to the Sci-Fi comedy film of 1940 of the same name.

The film opens up with a couple sleeping in bed in a luxurious house with sweeping views across a calm ocean. It is about 3:40am. The woman wakes up, and stealthily sneaks through the house trying not to disturb her Diazepam drugged partner. Her bags are already packed. She disables the security monitors in order to make a clean getaway, and in doing so has to go down into her partners laboratory. There she sees for the first time a mysterious looking piece of equipment with three shackles on either side at ankle, waist and shoulder height. She moves past this, for this is not her mission to wonder WTF! Zeus the Rottweiler dog follows her out of the house and in trying to remove the shock collar, the dogs backs up slightly, bumps the sports car and sets of its alarm. She scales the high concrete wall and flees through the woods and to the road to meet her sister picking her up in her car. Just as she gets into the car, the shadowy figure of a man hurtles towards the vehicle and smashes through the passenger side window with his fist. The sisters narrowly escape being caught after a violent struggle. The man, with a bloodied hand, picks up her prescription bottle of Diazepam in the road that she dropped during the escape.

The woman we learn is Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) who two weeks later is in hiding in a secret location with childhood friend and now Police Detective James Lanier (Aldis Hodge) and his mid-teenage daughter Sydney Lanier (Storm Reid). One day, and against Cecilia's express wishes (for wanting to keep her location a secret from anybody and everyone), her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer) visits the Lanier household. Emily delivers the news that Cecilia's abusive and over controlling sociopathic partner Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) has committed suicide. At a hearing of Adrian's Will, which is handled by Adrian's brother and lawyer Tom Griffin (Michael Dorman), it is announced that he left Cecilia US$5M payable over the next four years or so in monthly instalments of US$100K, upon condition that she does not get a criminal record and that she remains sound of mind.

During the days and weeks that follow, Cecilia becomes agitated by a seemingly unseen presence in the house. One day when James has gone to work she leaves breakfast cooking to awake Sydney and a kitchen knife removes itself from the bench top and the stove turns itself up and the cooking bacon and eggs rapidly overheat, burn and the pan catches fire. At a job interview for an architecture firm, Cecilia opens her portfolio to demonstrate her work to her prospective employer only to find it empty. After trying to stand, she faints and is taken to hospital. The next day the doctor calls with the results of her blood tests, reporting they found high levels of Diazepam in her system. Immediately afterwards, she finds the same prescription bottle with which she drugged Adrian and had dropped in the road the night she made her escape, in her own bathroom with his bloodied fingerprints on the label.

Cecilia arranges a meeting with Tom, bringing James along, and states that she firmly believes that Adrian, who was a leader in optic science, discovered the means to make himself invisible and faked his own death just to torment her. Tom of course vehemently denies this notion saying that his ashes sit in a casket on the mantlepiece in his office in their plain view. He goes on to explain that Adrian had also abused and sought to control him and was the type of person to make one think such a thing despite not doing so. Cecilia visits Emily, only to learn that she was sent the previous evening a hateful email from Cecelia's account, saying that she feels suffocated by her and she never wants to see her again. Emily tells her that Adrian is dead and slams the door in her face. Cecilia goes home to read the email in her 'sent' box, and breaks down. 

She is comforted by Sydney, but suddenly out of nowhere Sydney is violently struck in the face by an unseen figure while her head is turned away from Cecilia, making it look like she was responsible. James, furious, rushes his daughter out of the house and orders Cecilia to go to her sister (which is hardly an option either!). She tries to call Adrain's old mobile phone number and listening intently she can hear it ringing and vibrating coming from the roof space above her room. Venturing up into the attic space, she locates Adrian's mobile phone together with both the missing knife and her missing portfolio of architectural drawings. Sensing she is being watched she peers gingerly over the hatchway to the attic and is able to finally reveal the figure when she pours white paint over him. 

A violent struggle ensues and she flees the house. Catching an Uber, she returns to Adrian's beachside home to investigate and discovers the rig that she has seen earlier is used to produce a suit that uses cameras to render the wearer invisible. Inadvertently she presses some buttons on a key pad and the rig generates one such suit. She takes it and hides it in the walk in robe before escaping another attack from the figure, wearing a separate suit. Cecilia arranges a meeting with Emily at a busy city restaurant and starts to tell her sister about the suit. The invisible figure slits Emily's throat at the table where they are seated and puts the knife in her hand to frame Cecilia for the murder. As other diners look on, and start to panic fleeing the restaurant, Cecilia is held down by a waiter until the Police arrive.

Protesting her innocence and man handled kicking and screaming Cecilia is held in a secure treatment facility presumably awaiting trial for the murder of her sister. Cecilia is informed by the medical staff that she is recently pregnant within the last four weeks or so. Tom visits her and quietly offers to have her released and her record wiped clean if she agrees to return to Adrian and raise their child together as though none of this had ever happened, implying that he helped his brother stage his suicide, and explaining that the birth control pills that she was secretly taking were substituted by Adrian for a placebo. 

Tom just requires a signature, but seeing that Cecilia is unsure gives her three days to consider his offer. In the process while Tom is distracted, she manages to steal a gold fountain pen from his briefcase, which she uses later to slit her wrists in the shower in a bid to entice Adrian out. When the figure tries to stop her, she stabs him repeatedly. This causes his suit to fail intermittently and flicker in and out of visibility, attracting the attention of several Security Officers. Adrian incapacitates, injures and murders the security staff as he escapes the building. Cecilia follows him out of building in the pouring rain and attempts to kill him with a security guard's gun. Adrian subdues her and admits that he will not harm her while she is pregnant. He speeds off in a car and Cecilia commandeers another passing vehicle and gives chase. En route she calls James and alerts him that Adrian intends to kill Sydney instead, and to make his way home immediately. 

Cecilia arrives at James' house, where she finds them both being violently attacked by an unseen intruder. She sets off a fire extinguisher that renders the unseen figure visible, and shoots him four times in the chest, dead. She removes the facial covering of the suit to reveal not Adrian as expected, but Tom instead. When police converge on Adrian's home, they locate him locked up and bound behind a boarded up wall in the basement, but very much alive, and subsequently claiming that he was his brother's captive all along. A few days later at Police Headquarters, Cecilia claims to James that Adrian sent Tom to his house in his place, knowing exactly what would happen, and that they had shared the use of his invisibility suit. All charges against Cecilia seemingly now dropped. James however, remains skeptical about Cecilia's claims. 

Attempting to get Adrian to admit to his role, she agrees to meet him for dinner at his home to discuss her pregnancy. She offers a reconciliation, but only if he is brutally honest with her about his involvement. When Adrian continues to deny it, Cecilia starts to cry at which Adrian moves to comfort her. All the while, James is listening in remotely and recording their conversation via a wire that Cecilia is wearing. 

Cecilia smiles and says she needs to go clean herself up, disappearing into the bathroom. Moments later, the room's security camera captures Adrian taking a kitchen knife and slitting his own throat, followed by Cecilia emerging from the bathroom, screaming and crying at the dying Adrian now collapsed on the floor in a pool of his own blood, and calling the police. She then steps just out of the camera's view and taunts a dying Adrian with a smirk and the word 'surprise' - the same word that Adrian used when she was under sedation in the treatment facility. Hearing Cecilia's screams for help James is seen just about to enter the house as Cecilia is exiting. Asking what happened, and seeing the invisibility suit in her carry all bag, she assures him that Adrian committed suicide, which he reluctantly accepts. She proceeds to leave with Zeus in tow, as he enters the house. 

I really enjoyed 'The Invisible Man' for its fresh modern approach to a story that is 120 years old, and for it turning the tables to centre on the put upon protagonist (Moss) rather that the antagonist invisible man himself (Jackson-Cohen). The film is deftly handled by Whannel who here once again proves that he can do a whole lot more with a whole lot less and still eek out the tension, emotion, scares and the atmosphere of dread and paranoia in this smart of the moment retelling update of a classic of the horror genre. Moss gives another top performance as the increasingly unhinged Cecilia as her life begins to unravel in a series of bizarre circumstances, before coming good with what must be almost the prefect crime herself. This offering certainly provides the much needed jolt in the arm that Universal Studios 'Dark Universe' needs to re-establish its credibility and move forward with a renewed focus on its standalone shared classic monsters genre that reigned supreme from the 1920's through the '50's.  

'The Invisible Man' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-