The New "Invisible Man" and Hitchcock

As I post this, February is about to turn into March, and Universal looks to be getting a very well reviewed small hit in its newest version of "The Invisible Man."

The back story is fascinating. A few years back, Universal tried to launch an entire franchise of its old-time Universal Monsters films in a new context -- a universe to match that of Marvel and DC comics. The idea was to have the monsters interact with each other after being "launched" with individual films. To "push the idea," Universal launched the series with a big expensive version of "The Mummy" with Tom Cruise as an Indy Jones-type lead and Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll(who turns into Mister Hyde.) On the boards would be a new Invisible Man(with Johnny Depp); a new Bride of Frankenstein(with Angie Jolie) and a new Frankenstein(with Javier Bardem.)

But The Mummy tanked, Mr. Depp became radioactive, and the new franchise was temporarily shelved.

Until now. But the new "Invisible Man" isn't from the Depp script. Its rather low budget(unlike The Mummy) and it features only one kinda/sorta star: Elisabeth Moss, of "Mad Men," "The Handmaid's Tale" and other quality work. One thing about The Invisible Man; it is entirely a tour de force for Moss -- she's on screen all the time and forced to emote to the edge of insanity in her massively emotional performance. This movie could turn her into a very big star.

Or not. Because I would suggest that one major problem WITH "The Invisible Man" is that we get "too much Moss." The other characters rather fade away and we are given too many scenes with the camera focused on Moss, alone in a room, trying to "suss out" just where the Invisible Man might be. We don't get enough interaction of Moss with other people. She's "in our face," all the time.

The Invisible Man is getting a lot of good reviews and one reason is that the film ties deeply into the "MeToo" movement -- abusive husband/lover division. The film takes the Julia Roberts movie "Sleeping with the Enemy" as its inspiration, with Moss escaping her rich and physically abusive lover(not husband?) at the beginning of the film much as Roberts escaped HER husband in that 1991(?) thriller.

With Moss supposedly "safe" with friends(a muscular African-American police detective and his daughter) the crazy rich lover does two things: (1) fakes his suicide(or did he?) and (2) becomes invisible so as to "gaslight" Moss(or IS this all in her mind?)

From this premise -- as many a reviewer has noted -- The Invisible Man takes its cues directly from Hitchocck. We have the "nobody will believe her" mechanism from The Lady Vanishes(Moss goes from thinking the lover is alive and simply spying on her to determining that with his brilliant scientific mind, he HAS developed invisiblity, and is literally standing next to her at times) and eventually other Hitchcock devices from Notorious and NXNW enter in.

Yep, Hitchcock is all over this baby and yet...not.

Its an old problem, I think. One can clearly see very positive Hitchcockian elements at play..but something about HOW they play doesn't remind us of Hitchcock.

Simply put, "The Invisible Man" is what I call "TOO suspenseful." Once the invisible psycho lover starts gaslighting Moss and making people not believe her as she becomes more panicky and hysterical -- there is no let-up. We have to watch Moss's descent into near madness AND to "see" her beaten and brutalized by the invisible psycho. And too many scenes only have Moss in them.

I'll grant you, Hitch focused mainly on Stewart following Novak at the beginning of Vertigo and on Leigh's theft-and-flight in Psycho, but eventually these characters DID have other scenes with other people, and Psycho in particular had some great dialogue scenes(Norman/Marion; Norman/Arbogast) to break up the suspense. Frenzy skirted being "too suspenseful" both with Rusk's sexual ultraviolence and Blaney's being hunted as the wrong man -- but Hitch detoured us over to the Oxford home for comedy dinners. Etc.

No, "The Invisble Man" is focused on Moss all the time, and she is in misery all the time, and nobody believes her all of the time -- so we hang on desperately for the release at the end, and it comes and it is satisfying but..its a long time getting there.

Its always a problem for a new 21st Century thriller to be compared to Hitchcock's thrillers, because what HE did is from a long, long time ago. As we saw with Van Sant's Psycho, what worked then doesn't really translate to now.