At a glance
| Director | Leigh Whannell |
| Release year | 2020 |
| Runtime | 124 minutes |
| Genre | Science fiction horror |
| Starring | Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Oliver Jackson-Cohen |
Plot
Cecilia Kass leaves Adrian Griffin in the middle of the night. He is an optics engineer, rich, and violent. She hides with a friend, a police detective, and his daughter. Then the news says Adrian has killed himself and left her the money. Cecilia does not believe the house is empty. Objects move. A knife is not where she left it. The people who want to help her start to hear a story that sounds like a breakdown.
The film treats invisibility as a technology and as a way an abuser keeps control after the door is locked. Cecilia has to prove a man is in the room when the room looks empty. The suit, when the film finally shows the logic of it, is optics, not magic.
Production
Leigh Whannell wrote and directed it for Blumhouse, after Universal’s plan for a shared Dark Universe stalled. This is not a continuation of the 1933 Claude Rains film. It uses the title and the idea. Elisabeth Moss plays Cecilia. Oliver Jackson-Cohen plays Adrian. The budget was about $7 million. It opened on February 28, 2020, just before theaters closed for the pandemic, and still grossed more than $140 million worldwide.
Whannell has said he wanted the scare to be an empty frame. The camera holds on corners. Moss carries the proof. A sequel was discussed and then replaced by other invisible-man projects that did not continue this story. The film stands as one woman’s account of a man the institutions cannot see.
Cast
- Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass
- Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Adrian Griffin
- Aldis Hodge as James Lanier
- Storm Reid as Sydney Lanier
- Harriet Dyer as Emily Kass
- Michael Dorman as Tom Griffin
Trivia
- Whannell also wrote Saw and Insidious. This is a different kind of trap.
- The opening escape is staged as a heist. The rest of the film is the man catching up.
- Moss did many of the fights against a performer who was then removed, and against empty space.
- The 1933 film is not in this continuity. The name is the link.
- It opened two weeks before widespread theater closures in 2020 and still made its money back many times.
- Adrian’s brother Tom is the public face of the estate. The suit is the private one.
Related on this site
Trailer
Wrapping the Film
Official Universal bonus clip on wrapping production of the film.
Go Behind the Screams
Breakdown of the motion-control and greenscreen techniques used for the Invisible Man’s attack sequences.