![]() James and Sydney’s warmth and patience counter, and comfort, Cecilia’s continued cacophony, and Hodge & Reid are afforded the real estate to render them real people rather than pins set up for third-act mayhem to knock down. She can barely put a foot outside, so certain Adrian will be there to immediately whisk her away. Two weeks pass, but the nervousness in Cecilia’s eyes hasn’t dimmed a bit. She then goes off the grid at the modest, suburban-San Francisco home of James (Aldis Hodge of Brian Banks), a childhood friend turned cop, and James’s college-hopeful daughter, Sydney (Storm Reid of A Wrinkle in Time). Hooker and Chris Terhune establish the film’s baseline sonic scheme - one that shifts, often on a whim, from threnodic rush to taciturn void as the static might in Cecilia’s long-besieged mind.Īlthough not without complications, Cecilia makes it out with help from her estranged sister, Emily (Harriet Dyer). ![]() Working in perfect tandem with composer Benjamin Wallfisch’s squonky bursts and spooky strains, sound designers P.K. It’s half past 3 a.m., and Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) is on the verge of an overdue escape from years of mental, verbal and physical abuse at the hands of Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) - a renowned scientific mind in the field of optics.Ĭecilia’s exodus bears the hallmarks of precision planning and nigh-impossible odds as it might from Alcatraz, so prison-like is Adrian’s oceanside mansion. Wells’ work, here’s one that fixes its gaze not on a man who loses his mind and body, but the woman who lost herself to said man’s mind and body well before any scientific breakthrough. After a near-century of adaptations of H.G. It lives there from the outset.Īnd while a modern-day explanation for the villain’s method of invisibility is certainly important - sensibly updated for a post-fact, deep-fake world without getting in over its head - the contemporary context of this remake matters more. This movie needs not escalate into horror. Rather than offering up yet another mindless, middling resurrection of intellectual property, Whannell’s The Invisible Man establishes a bedrock of sadly relatable - and utterly terrifying - ideas and instincts. And boy, is it an even greater improvement over the idiotic uselessness of 2014’s Dracula Untold and 2017’s The Mummy, Universal’s addle-brained attempts to launch an interconnected “Dark Universe” from its stable of creatures. ![]() The Invisible Man is a far cry from the existential questions that eluded Whannell altogether in his last film, Upgrade, content to giddily stretch a grindhouse skin over an AI skeleton with no philosophical punch whatsoever. But never for a second does he let you forget how large he looms, even when he’s not posing an immediate, and often merciless, threat. Thankfully, it’s also two hours of trigger discipline.Īlong with persuasive work from his cast and visual effects / stunt professionals, Whannell successfully eliminates his assailant from visible space. By reimagining a Universal Monsters classic to tackle the universal monster of domestic abuse, writer-director Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man certainly constitutes a two-hour trigger warning. ![]()
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