Invisible Man, The : Invisible Man DVD Review


FROM UNIVERSAL PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT

Invisible Man available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD 29 June from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.


From iconic producer Jason Blum (Halloween, Split, Get Out, Us) and director Leigh Whannell (Saw, Insidious, Upgrade), this psychological thriller modernizes Universal’s classic monster against a backdrop of an empowered woman facing her tormentor.

Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) slowly begins to rebuild her life after the death of her abusive ex-boyfriend (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). But before long, she begins to question whether or not he is truly gone.

Invisible Man (2020) DVDThe film begins quite slowly and in fact the first 20-30 minutes are simple scene setting as we watch Cecillia escape the house that she lives in with her abusive boyfriend - a very wealty tech giant. It's less tense than it should be and her escape is without major incident, it's a fairly well planned mission. Just days later she finds out that her ex has committed suicide. Of course the audience knows this not to be the case but Cecillia celebrates and with the large inheritance she receives she buys gifts for her sister, brother in law and family. Little does she know that her ex is still alive and planning to get his revenge.

Elizabeth Moss is the go to woman at the moment for horror after turns in the Handmaid's Tale and Us. Her career has certainly blossomed since she had to make do with bit parts in comedies such as Get Him To The Greek. But she's worthy of the praise and attention... She's a fine actor and whilst she doesn't seem to have yet moved away from horror genre films at the moment I'm sure that she will show her quality can transcend this genre in the future.

The film itself, once it gets going, is impressive, in fact it's received plaudits wherever it's been shown and been very positively reviewed, but can it ever re-capture the thrill of the 1933 classic starring Claude Raines written by the master H.G. Wells? I think the languid opening scene could have been trimmed to make it more exciting and to cut the run time to considerably less than the bloated two hours and five minutes. Horror films should be taut and tense, this losses a little of that in its overly long runtime. But overall the performances carry this film really well and we end up with a result that whilst perhaps it doesn't better the original at least lives up to it. And whilst I enjoyed Paul Verhoven's Hollow Man - a 1990s update on The Invisible Man - I think this film probably tops it as a horror movie.

Produced in a budget of just $7M this film is a massive financial success having taken $129M at the box office so a sequel of some sort is almost inevitable.

Author : Kevin Stanley