THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) *

You know, in MY day when they made an Invisible Man movie, they MADE an Invisible Man movie.  Filmmakers really knew what the audience wanted to see back in those days.  They also knew exactly what a man would really do once he became invisible.  That of course, is go to the nearest girls’ locker room and spy on college girls showering.  If you don’t believe me, just go watch The Man Who Wasn’t There in 3-D, The Invisible Kid, and The Invisible Maniac.  You know, the classics.  

In this newfangled Invisible Man, there’s only one dang shower scene and the Invisible Man doesn’t even sneak a peek.  Then again, the woman in question is his wife, so he’s already seen her naked, but still.  

To make matters worse, he keeps harassing his wife and trying to drive her crazy.  He steals her bedsheets at night, makes her burn her bacon, and harms her loved ones by making it look like she did it.  Dude, you’re freaking invisible and you’re spending all your energy on your ex?  There are plenty of invisible fish in the sea.  

Remember when Universal Studios made The Mummy with Tom Cruise and it was going to open the doors for a Universal Monsters shared universe?  Except no one went to see it, so they canceled it.  The Mummy was a big budget epic with a fun sense of adventure and cool special effects.  This is like a Lifetime Movie, but with an Invisible Man.  It should’ve been called Stalked by My Invisible Ex or Escaping Invisibility or Mother, May I Sleep with the Invisible Man? or some shit.  The budget was so pathetic that there are only like six special effects shots in the whole thing and even the most rudimentary effect (like a gun floating in mid-air) looked better in the Invisible Man films from the ‘30s and ‘40s.

It’s like they forgot how to make an Invisible Man movie.  Never mind the fact that he doesn’t spy on college girls showering.  The worst aspect is that it’s not a serum that turns him invisible, it’s a suit.  That means the formula doesn’t turn him crazy, he’s already crazy from the get-go, which is a gross miscalculation.  Universal Monsters always worked when there was a tinge of sympathy.  The Wolf Man didn’t want to turn into a werewolf, Frankenstein didn’t ask to be created, Dracula was just looking for someone to love, and the Invisible Man was the victim of a side effect of a poorly tested drug.  (Nowadays, there’d be a commercial listing the possible side effects, including coughing, fever, and turning batshit insane.)  Heck, even the Universal Monsters of the 21^st century were sympathetic.   

Another miscalculation is having the whole thing hinge on the wife.  Imagine if James Whale made The Invisible Man with Gloria Stuart as the star and gave Claude Rains one freaking line for 75% of the running time.  I get what they’re trying to say.  She’s trying to escape a bad relationship, and wherever she goes, he’s still with her, even if she can’t see him.  It’s Invisible Me Too.  It’s just that the handling of everything is so TV Movie of the Week.  Give me the Mission:  Impossible, but with a Mummy treatment of the Universal classics any day.  Either that or they should’ve taken the Guillermo del Toro route and sexed up the monster a la The Shape of Water.  You can’t tell me it wouldn’t been awesome seeing the Invisible Man knocking the invisible boots.  

This Invisible Man is also one of those Woman Takes a Long Pointless Walk Down a Hallway Only to Be Frightened by the Obvious Jump Scare movie.  There’s hardly a sound for minutes on end, then the soundtrack CRASHBOOMBANGSCREECHES to overcompensate for the predictably placed jump scare.  In fact, this is probably one of the quietest films I’ve seen in a long time.  So quiet in fact that the sound from the theater next door threatened to drown out what little noise was coming from our screen.  Heck, I started getting more caught up from the sounds coming from the wall than the sights coming from the screen.  

I can’t say it’s all bad though.  There’s one great scene where a woman is being a total Karen to her server in a restaurant and the Invisible Man has enough of her shit and cuts her throat.  You know you’re in trouble with a horror movie when your most sympathetic character is the waiter.