The Invisible Man

Elizabeth Moss is the main reason to watch this film. Leigh Whannell wrote and directed this modern reiteration of the classic story and he definitely gave it a refreshing spin. However, after an excellent opening sequence, the story started to drag and Moss played the victim for far too long. Unfortunately, when she started kicking-ass, the movie was almost over. As brilliant and as enrapturing as Moss was, her character was too passive to be totally engaging. And Whannell also succumbed to the M Night Shyamalan syndrome with an unnecessary double-ending (hint hint...no spoilers).

Whannell is a great horror director and the first Saw and Insidious can rightfully be claimed as cornerstones of the modern horror genre. And he used his skill to great effect here with long, wandering shots and wide-angles, daring you to blink or take a breath just in case you missed something.

However as a writer, Whannell tended to be indulgent and clunky. His storylines lacked depth and his characters lacked substance. They all appear as stock characters with default emotions and storyline. If it was not for Moss, this film would have been even flatter.

This film ran just over two hours (124 minutes) and it could have been shorter and tighter. The story is well known so there is no surprise there regarding who/what the antagonist was, and in that case the narrative had to focus on the journey, but in that regard it just meandered. Whannell's screenplay was too simplistic and predictable to be effective, so thankfully we had Moss to make it all worth it.

Moss is going to win an Oscar one day. With Mad Men, Top of the Lake and The Handmaid's Tale, she has established herself as a tremendous actress with incredible range and depth. And once Handmaid's is over, perhaps she can focus fully on her feature film career and that might lead to a lot more exciting projects.

In The Invisible Man, Moss commanded the screen and her emotional breakdown was spectacular. A pity Whannell did not harness that raw power to his advantage. Everybody else around her were less spectacular, so luckily the antagonist was invisible and Moss really only had to act against herself.

This film was a showcase for Moss and reaffirmed Whannell as an accomplished, albeit unexciting, genre director. But it will be so much more exciting if we paired Moss with Hereditary/Midsommar's Ari Aster or The Witch/The Lighthouse's Robert Eggers.