![]() ![]() The Invisible Man as a figure of domestic abuse, and a cause for trauma and PTSD, is not the subtext of the film, but the text itself. Whannell smartly shifts focus away from the Invisible Man and towards his victim Cecilia, casting the central monster in an entirely new light and giving us a fascinating new heroine in the process. But for contemporary audiences, the unknown is far more frightening, as is the perspective of the victim, rather than the monster. This existence of the monster as a knowable protagonist is an aspect that Universal monsters of the past have thrived on. Even as we look upon the characters in disgust, we still find them compelling, more so if they’re chewing up scenery, not unlike comic book villains. As audiences, we’re drawn in to men behaving badly, and the opportunity to see actors revel in their villainy. Whether we’re talking Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) of the original film, or Hollow Man’s Sebastian Crane (Kevin Bacon), directors have been drawn to the experience of invisible men, their search for a cure, their sadistic reigns of terror and, in Verhoeven’s case, their sexual assaults. Prior adaptations of The Invisible Man, or works inspired by it, like Paul Verhoeven’s sleazy Hollow Man (2000), took the same course as the novel by telling the story through the perspective of the central character. In a similar way to how Jordan Peele took the seemingly outdated, oft-explored and parodied horror concept of body-snatching or brain-swapping and made it a frightening vehicle to explore racism with 2017’s Get Out, Whannell uses the pulpy powers of invisibility to expose the terrors that have become all the more visible in the #MeToo era. In Whannell’s iteration, however, it’s not ruling the world the Invisible Man is after, but a power of a more intimate and realistic nature. He can rob, and rape, and kill,” the bandaged figure says in Whale’s film. Nobody will see him come, nobody will see him go. The Invisible Man, the original character and not those who assumed the mantle in Universal’s five sequels, is the most vile of all the Universal monsters, driven not by a physical need for blood in order to survive, a curse or a desire to be left alone, but by cold, cruel malice. ![]() The success of this new film, and why it makes for such a strong debut in Universal’s latest attempt to make these classic characters scary again, also comes down to morality. It’s far easier to buy a man inventing a scientific formula that allows for invisibility than it is to buy resurrecting the dead from stitched together body parts, or an ancient aquatic creature who falls in love with a human woman. And while he may share a scientific origin like Frankenstein’s monster and the Gill-Man, there’s less suspension of belief required. Unlike Dracula, the Mummy and the Wolf-Man, his existence isn’t reliant on the supernatural. ![]() The Invisible Man has always been one of the more grounded Universal monsters. Wells’ groundbreaking novella, this latest incarnation of The Invisible Man makes the titular character frightening again by giving him a contemporary urgency. A reimagining of James Whale’s 1933 film of the same name, itself based on H.G. After years of failed attempts of revitalize its classic monsters, Universal has finally found the winning formula with Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man. ![]()
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