Movie Review: The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man **** / *****

Directed by: Leigh Whannell.

Written by: Leigh Whannell based on the novel by H.G. Wells.

Starring: Elisabeth Moss (Cecilia Kass), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Adrian Griffin), Harriet Dyer (Emily Kass), Aldis Hodge (James Lanier), Storm Reid (Sydney Lanier), Michael Dorman (Tom Griffin).

 

Leigh Whannell’s ingeniously clever horror film The Invisible Man does just about everything right – but its smartest decision was the first one made – to not concentrate on the monster, but instead to focus on his victim. All versions of the invisible man are basically creeps – whether it’s in the H.G. Wells novel, the James Whale film from 1933 or even copies like Hollow Man – people who turn themselves invisible inevitable become creeps, perverts, abusers, etc. And so Whannell makes the brilliant decision to take that as its starting point, and instead focus on that abusers target – his wife Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) who he has terrorized even before he became invisible, and now that she has finally found the strength and support to leave him, has taken that terrorization to a new level. The Invisible Man becomes a horror movie for the #MeToo era – and a brilliantly executed one at that.

 

The films tense opening scene is Cecilia escaping from her husband Adrian – and their massive Bay area home, that Adrian owns because he is a leader in the field of optics. There are is a high-tech security system and surveillance system, as well as low tech system – like a very high wall. Cecilia sneaks away in the middle of the night – rescued by her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer) as the getaway driver, and then staying with her old friend James (Aldis Hodge) – a cop and single father raising a teenager (Storm Reid). Even as Cecilia is able to escape, she cannot really escape – she is paranoid to leave James’ house, paranoid that Adrian will find her as he always threatened to do. A temporary relief comes when Adrian apparently kills himself – she is called to his brothers office, Tom (Michael Dorman) who tells her that she will receive $5 million, $100K per month for just over four years, as long as she is not convicted of a crime, and deemed mentally unfit. And then, the real terror starts – Cecilia believes Adrian has found a way to make himself invisible – and is slowly ramping up the level of terror he is inflicting on her. And, of course, no one believes Cecilia – because that sounds insane.

 

This was another potential stumbling block – the “everyone thinks woman is crazy” in a horror film, when we, in the audience, know she is not, is an old trope – and yet, in this case, it works brilliantly. Part of this is because of Elisabeth Moss – this is another great performance by one of the best actresses on the planet, particularly if she is required to slowly spin out of control and be broken down piece by piece as she is here. And part of it is because it’s a narrative that fits nicely in the timeliness of the narrative as conceived by Whannell – what have we learned from the #MeToo era if it isn’t that too often society doesn’t believe women. It took dozens to take down Cosby or Weinstein – and men with “only” a few alleged victims more often than not skate away clean. And what Cecilia is accusing Adrian of really does sound insane – everyone believes he is dead, and she says that not only is he not, he is invisible. Adrian is brilliant in the way he makes his presence known to Cecilia – but not to anyone else.

 

As a director, Whannell has improved with each passing film. The writer behind the Saw and Insidious franchises, starting directing a few years ago with one of the Insidious films, moved on to the very strange sci-fi/horror/action film Upgrade (that I kind of feel I should see again – I may have underrated it at the time). Here, the camera moves slowly around the large house Adrian and Cecilia shared, and increases the sense of claustrophobia in the smaller places the narrative goes. You may well find yourself thinking of Fincher (Zodiac, for the foggy portrait of San Francisco, perhaps Panic Room for the interior scenes) or even Hitchcock at points. The special effects in the movie are excellent – and never overused. They are creepy – even when we start to get to the scenes we expect – with paint or flour or water, etc. showing us at least part of the “invisible man”.

 

All of this leads to a climax that is earned for once. We think we’re going to get to an special effects and action laden finale, but the film keeps going (and even that is better than they normally are) to an ending in which Cecilia doesn’t just use what has been held against her, and women in general, but weaponizes it. It’s a twist on the final girl image – and one finale clever twist on the expected in a film that is full of them.

Movie Review: Upgrade

Upgrade *** / *****

Directed by: Leigh Whannell.

Written by: Leigh Whannell.

Starring: Logan Marshall-Green (Grey Trace), Melanie Vallejo (Asha Trace), Steve Danielsen (Jeff Handley), Abby Craden (Kara), Harrison Gilbertson (Eron Keen), Benedict Hardie (Fisk), Richard Cawthorne (Serk), Christopher Kirby (Tolan), Richard Anastasios (Wen), Linda Cropper (Pamela), Betty Gabriel (Detective Cortez), Emily Havea (Nurse Henderson), Ming-Zhu Hii (Dr. Diana Gordon), Simon Maiden (Stem), Sachin Joab (Dr. Bhatia), Clayton Jacobson (Manny)

 

Perhaps there is a truly great science fiction movie lurking inside the premise of Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade – but if there is, Whannell doesn’t seem too interested in exploring it. Rather, he uses his rather ingenious premise as a jumping off point to make a gory, B-grade revenge film, and while no one could mistake it for high art, if taken in the spirit intended, than it’s still a lot of fun to watch the film, as it gets increasingly insane, and increasingly bloody. We probably shouldn’t expect Whannell – writer of the original Saw, and co-writer of the Insidious series, to get bogged down in big ideas – and perhaps we don’t want him to either. He knows precisely what he wants Upgrade to be – and if that isn’t overly ambitious, well, it also doesn’t suffer from delusions of grandeur either.

 

In the near future, machine control almost our entire lives (sounds like the present to me, but I digress). Technophobe Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) prefers to work with his hands though – on stuff like old cars, that don’t have all that techno-crap. One of his clients is Eron (Harrison Gilbertson), the head of the biggest tech company in the world though, so when Grey and his wife are attacked by a group of people with guns implanted into their bodies, leaving his wife dead, and Grey a quadriplegic, Eron reaches out to him. His newest technology – called Stem – can be implants in Grey – and allow him to walk again. Of course, he’ll have to keep it a secret – you cannot just implant this type of stuff in people without years of testing (apparently these people didn’t see Kirby Dick’s The Bleeding Edge). Once Stem is inside Grey, it does indeed give him the ability to move again – and lots of other things as well. Grey and Stem become an unstoppable killing machine – and you know who Grey is going after. But Stem also keeps learning, and becomes increasingly powerful to boot.

 

Upgrade is schlock. There is no way around it – the film is pure b-movie madness in which the first killing that Grey and Stem do nearly takes off someone’s head in a splatter of blood – and is downright tame compared to the rest of the film. Whannell could, undeniably, have made a film that explores man’s relationship with machines, the dangers of technology and playing God, etc. – but he isn’t interested in that. He wants to kill people in increasingly cool, increasingly bloody ways. Mission accomplished.

 

The movie works basically because everyone knows precisely what kind of movie they are in, and what is required of them. Marshall-Green is fine as the everyman (even if, every time I see him, I cannot help but think of him as the poor man’s Tom Hardy) – and the rest of the cast, from Gilbertson as techno-nerd who invention gets away from him, to Benedict Hardie as Fisk, leader of the tech gang who killed Grey’s wife, play their roles to the hilt as well. Whannell doesn’t dwell too long on how any of this is supposed to work – preferring instead to get to the killings, and not let up.

 

Up until now, Whannell’s career behind the camera (he’s an actor too), has mainly been tied to director James Wan – who directed Saw and Dead Silence and Insidious, all written by Whannell. This is his second film as director – after Insidious: Chapter III – and it’s good see him out of Wan’s shadow for once (there is, for sharp eyed viewers, a reference to Wan in the film). Wan has established himself as one of the premiere directors of horror working in America today – mainly with The Conjuring, its sequel and Insidious. He has now moved onto blockbuster – with the Furious Seven and the upcoming Aquaman, and we’re all the poorer for it. Whannell though doesn’t seem so quick to leave the bloody world of horror and B-movies behind him. While he isn’t the director Wan is – Upgrade is a significant improvement over his last film, and makes me curious as to what he’ll do next. This is small budget, genre filmmaking done right.

Movie Review: Insidious Chapter 3

Insidious Chapter 3
Directed by: Leigh Whannell.
Written by: Leigh Whannell.
Starring: Dermot Mulroney (Sean Brenner), Stefanie Scott (Quinn Brenner), Angus Sampson (Tucker), Leigh Whannell (Specs), Lin Shaye (Elise Rainier), Tate Berney (Alex Brenner), Michael Reid MacKay (The Man Who Can't Breathe), Steve Coulter (Carl), Hayley Kiyoko (Maggie).

There is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to horror sequels mainly because it’s hard to fool audiences with the same story twice –let alone three or more times. The original Insidious was a ridiculous horror movie – full of silly plotting, but is also wonderfully creepy and downright scary – directed with an overload of style by James Wan, with a screenplay by Leigh Whannell, who knew it was ridiculous, and had fun with it anyway. It was a wonderful horror movie – one of the best mainstream ones in the past few years. Insidious Chapter 2 wasn’t as good – it did feel more like a repeat than anything else, although once again, the film was wonderfully directed by Wan. James Wan has left the series, as director anyway, in the third installment – in order to do Furious 7 – by his longtime collaborator, Whannell (who wrote Saw, Dead Silence and the first two Insidious movies for Wan) makes his directorial debut for the third installment. No, Whannell is no Wan behind the camera – I hope Wan doesn’t get lost in blockbusters, and comes back to horror at some point, where he truly excels – but he does a decent enough job copying the style, and giving the audience some solid scares in the movie. The movie never quite takes off however – never drew me enough to make me forget how silly it was. The scares work – but not much else.

Although its entitled Chapter 3, this is actually a prequel to the first two Insidious movies – presumably it takes place sometime in the mid-2000s, judging on the cell phones the teenagers in the film use. It stars Stefanie Scott as Quinn Brenner, a high school senior, still reeling from the death of her mother, and the fact that quiet father Sean (Dermot Mulroney) has trouble expressing his feelings, and expects her to take care of her younger brother. Quinn seeks out Elise (Lin Shaye) – our link to the previous movies – because she wants to contact her mother on the other side. Elise wants to help – but says she cannot – it may kill her to enter the darkness again. But she advises Quinn to stop trying to contact her mother. After all, when you call out to one of the dead – they can all hear you. After a horrific car accident breaks both of her legs, she is stuck in the family apartment – and something is after her.

All of the Insidious movies have been ridiculous in terms of plot – but the first movie worked because its character felt real and the movie was genuinely unsettling and scary. Wan is an expert at horror movie atmosphere – and rarely relies on blood and gore to try and scare, but rather likes to build up the tension gradually. Insidious worked because of this – and Insidious Chapter 2 comes close to working because of the style, and the residual good will we felt towards the cast. Unfortunately, those are two things lacking in Chapter 3. The style isn’t quite as good – while Whannell tries to follow Wan’s lead in building atmosphere, he isn’t quite up to the task. In terms of characters, it’s a pleasure to watch character actress Lin Shaye continue to steal these movies – when the movie concentrates on the other characters, it is nowhere near as good. Mulroney is mistakes blank stares with subtle depth, and Scott isn’t given much to do except look pretty or scared or both throughout the movie.

Perhaps Whannell would have been better served to try a new series for his directorial debut. Stepping into the shoes of Wan was too big for him. He is a decent enough director – he may well direct a fine horror movie, and soon – but he cannot replicate Wan’s style completely. Nor should he want to. Insidious Chapter 3 delivers the scares the fans of the series expect – and not much else. It isn’t a horrible film to be sure, but like many horror sequels, we already know what will happen when we walk in – and the film does nothing really to surprise us.