I watched a trailer of this film when I went to see Parasite and immediately wanted to see it. I waited for the reviews (because as we all know a good movie review is priceless 😉 ) but they were stellar so I headed to my favorite theater to check the movie out in Dolby.

Wow. My expectations were so high and The Invisible Man still met them!

I love this movie. We’re talking about an adaptation of a 123-year-old novel that was already turned into a classic movie 87 years ago. The question becomes what’s the point? What new take can you bring to the table?

The answer becomes decide how to best make it relevant.

I wonder if this film got its initial inspiration from that horrid 2000 movie Hollow Man. Among its many, many problems, that movie had zero dramatic tension because it kept most of the action in a single building where the main character’s invisibility wasn’t even much of an asset. However, there was an inspired, terrifying scene where he walks into the home of a beautiful neighbor over whom he had been obsessing and rapes her.

I’ve talked about the amount of violence women deal with in our country, especially when compared with other developed nations, being horrifying. An absolutely astonishing number of rapes go unreported, because most people’s first response to an accusation is to call the woman a lying slut. This is in spite of how false rape accusations are no more common than false accusations of any other crime.

While this new film does not explicitly deal with rape, it very explicitly deals with domestic violence. That’s another issue – how many women are in abusive marriages, how many people snidely say “Why doesn’t she just leave?”, how many of the victims get killed if they do try to leave, and how much harsher the sentences are for women who kill their abusive partners in self-defense than for the men who beat them in the first place. The topic is especially timely, considering the Republicans currently in our federal government allowed the Violence Against Women Act to expire. There’s also the issue of abusive men deliberately “baby trapping” women, who then have to deal with a society far too replete with the anti-abortion cult calling them murderers if they seek escape. Of course the rights of a non-sentient and non-viable fetus trump those of an actual human who’s suffering. </sarcasm>

In this film our protagonist, Cecilia, seeks to escape her husband, who controls her every action, movement, and thought, and when she doesn’t obey punishes her with beatings, “among other things”. She does manage to get away, but like a lot of battered women she doesn’t have many places to go due to her husband controlling the finances.

To be fair, this husband did make vast amounts of money for them to live luxuriously, as he’s a genius inventor. However, he uses his brain for nefarious purposes after his wife leaves, devising a way for himself to become invisible. Imagine that: he can now stalk her, harass her and threaten her, while also harming those closest to her and letting them think she was responsible, leading to them inadvertently gaslighting her. Worst part: because she can’t even see him, she’s unable to do anything to stop him.

Actually, is she? I’ve actually heard some fans of the cult trash movie I Spit On Your Grave call it a feminist film, because the woman wins. Understandably, opponents of that film’s exploitative nature argue.

Here we have a movie about a woman dealing with the horrors far, far too many women deal with in our society, with the difficulty increased by magnitudes due to the abuser being literally invisible. In order to survive with her life, her sanity, and her physical well-being intact, she has to find guile, strength, and shrewdness she never knew she had.

Can she do it? Watch it and find out! Many others have seen it; the movie has already made over $100 million worldwide off of a mere $7 million budget and I predict it’s well on its way to becoming an iconic piece of feminist cinema!

Bottom line: Incredible filmmaking.

Up Next: The “original” classic.