Selena Screens It: The Invisible Man

By Selena Williams - Senior Editor

Director: Leigh Whannell
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge, Harriet Dyer and Storm Reid
The Invisible Man, released Feb. 24, 2020 
A little bit of history behind the film: The Invisible Man was published in 1952, during the literary period of modernism and postwar American fiction. The author of the novel, Ralph Ellison, was deeply influenced by the works of poet T. S. Eliot and novelist Richard Wright.

Summary: When Cecilia's (Elisabeth Moss) abusive ex Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) takes his own life and leaves her his fortune, she suspects his death was a hoax. As a series of coincidences turn lethal, Cecilia works to prove that her scientist ex becomes invisible to stalk and terrorize her. 
   This film is a mystery/SCI-FI thriller that is appalling in nature. The way director Leigh Whannell’s artistic capabilities executed this classic H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel was riveting. I thought his approach to the classic novel was interesting. He didn’t want to drive a good man mad with power, he wanted to take a man who is already menacing and amplify it by the ability to go unseen, so he made his villain an abusive boyfriend and his hero, Cecilia the woman trying to escape his torment. The result is Moss’s character being gaslit into a state of paranoid madness in mostly empty frames as Adrian inflicts his most violent acts of terror, leaving me immersed in Cecilia’s trauma. The storyline gave the film life. I was aesthetically pleased and stressed out from the first frame, and I didn’t know why. Maybe it was the anticipation of trying to find out what was going to happen next. This film didn’t disappoint and the reason might lay in Whannell having a significant background in filmmaking, he is well known for directing movies like Saw (2004), Insidious (2010) and Upgrade (2018) just to name a few. I also feel his cast did an excellent job in conveying their emotions, each scene felt realistic. So, if you are waiting for a movie to take your mind off of reality, this movie is definitely it.