Invisible Touch

I had sort of forgotten that Leigh Whannel had released The Invisible Man (2020). But once I remembered, I queued it right up.

It starts in an expensive modern bedroom, where Elisabeth Moss is laying awake next to Oliver Jackson-Cohen (although we barely see him - hint). After checking his bedside water glass to make sure he drank the drugged water, she starts to sneak out of the house. She makes it to the Uber, but Jackson-Cohen comes out of the house screaming, and she barely makes it away.

She stays with her friend, police detective Aldis Hodge (Leverage) and his teen daughter Storm Reid (Don't Let Go). She's shell-shocked, desperate to avoid being found by her abuser. So when her sister shows up, she is very upset. What if Jackson-Cohen has her followed? No problem, says sis - he's dead.

In fact, it turns out that he left everything to Moss, as long as she stays out of trouble. Clouds are beginning to lift. Or are they? Moss is noticing odd sounds and things like a small kitchen fire. But it's probably just the trauma. 

Or did Jackson-Cohen fake his death and design an invisibility suit? After all, he was CEO of an optics company. One night when she's alone, she becomes sure of it, dumping coffee grounds on the floor to check for footprints, and finally dumping paint on something - the Invisible Man! Of course, no one believes her. She sneaks into his house and finds another suit, which she carefully hides.

Then one day she is at a restaurant with her sister, who believes Moss wanted her dead (more of Jackson-Cohen's manipulation). Relations between them have started to thaw, when a knife moves under its own power, slits sister's throat and jumps into Moss' hand. Nobody is going to believe her story about this one.

This is an interesting framing of the Invisible Man story - from the point of view of a woman who has been abused, manipulated and gaslit. Because Moss runs away from Jackson-Cohen at the start, then him dying, he does sort of seem invisible in his own movie. It also makes him a monster - one of the problems with the base story is: Why does being invisible make you evil? What about if you start out that way?

Whannel does an unusually fine job on directing, getting a lot out of the modern mansion, luxurious and cold, plus filled with surveillance. He does some interesting things with atmosphere, killing the background music and letting the camera linger, looking for someone who isn't there - or is he? There's a scene where he holds on an empty kitchen for an uncomfortable amount of time, with no jump scare at the end. 

He gets great performances from Moss, Hodge, and Reid, although some of that might be just casting the right people and getting out of their way. Moss is both beaten down and terrified, but with an inextinguishable core of courage. The twists in last act are good, in my opinion, especially the last one. (Spoiler - she does to him what he did to her sister, and gets it on tape). And it sets up a great sequel, The Invisible Woman.