Knowing the plot of a suspense thriller ahead of time can be a bit of a detriment, but The Invisible Man is worth watching for a relatively original story told within a traditional formula. The film has many of the typical features of a suspense thriller, such as the perpetually gloomy sky, the voyeuristic perspective, the protagonist’s need to navigate “unknown dangers” in a “secret room” environment, the suspicion of mental problems and the situation of being a rebel.
What struck me most, however, was the way Cecilia always wore black sneakers, black sweatpants, a grey jumper, a haggard, sunken demeanour and a confused, frightened look in her eyes. It was easy to get into a paranormal or hallucinatory story, was everything imagined by the heroine? A lot of thrillers are made that way.
But The Invisible Man plays it up quite a bit, the atmosphere is well paced, and some of the plot is a bit beyond reality, so just take it as a story. An abused Cecilia escapes from her controlling, wealthy boyfriend Adrian with the help of her sister Emily, and seeks refuge with her best friend James, a policeman. Later Adrian commits suicide leaving Cecilia a large inheritance, and Cecilia, who wants to start her life over, finds a bizarre chain of events that leads to the suspicion that Adrian is not only not dead, but using the stealth technology she has researched to try to destroy her. How should the heroine escape in order to protect herself?
Cecilia is faced with the dilemma of whether to trust herself or trust others, and what to do when no one else trusts her and she is facing difficulties? Her boyfriend disguises himself as an invisible man to lurk around Cecilia, filming her and creating situations that make people misunderstand her and isolate her. But no one else believes Cecilia, leaving her convinced that her boyfriend is dead, all of which she is overthinking. It’s not easy for her to be brainwashed by the people around her to say “it’s okay”, “it doesn’t matter” and “you think too much” when her invisible boyfriend is about to kill her and she’s going crazy. It’s a great feeling of powerlessness, isn’t it? Is this feeling familiar?
Wow, I feel like my brain is about to be split in half, who should I listen to? Why is there always an evil voice inside me, this bunch of useless guys. But on second thought, there are some things you can’t rely on others for, you have to rely on yourself, but the process is just too hard.
The boyfriend has pushed Cecilia too far, not only with mind control but also with murder, killing her sister and her best friend’s daughter, blaming it all on Cecilia, turning her into a murderer, a psychopath and basically “socially dead”. Cecilia herself doesn’t understand what it is about herself that attracts such a powerful inventor and rich boyfriend to chase after her, but they do, and the reality is that Cecilia will get more people killed if she bothers anyone else, so she has to take it on herself.
The reality is that Cecilia’s trouble with other people will get more people killed, so she has to carry the burden herself.
The film has an element of mental illness, as Cecilia’s behaviour after being falsely accused of murder and mental illness is too much like being mentally ill, always telling people that a “dead” person is invisible and trying to kill himself, and even more so after being labelled as such. However, the heroine is basically always intellectually on line, and although she is very broken, she is always trying to find a way to solve her problems and find a way to survive even when no one else believes her, which is really admirable.
The one part of this story that is lucky for the heroine is that the story doesn’t stay focused on a small space but expands to other places where the hero attacks more people and it proves that Cecilia wasn’t lying. However, the boyfriend blames his brother for everything and wraps himself up as the victim, at which point the people around him jump in again, the real culprit has been found, stop thinking blindly and have a good life with your boyfriend, so keep your eyes peeled before looking for your other half, otherwise when you get on the boat of thieves, others are the ones who persuade you to make peace and not to break up, and it is you who are finished if you can’t get off the boat.
Finally, do you want to know what happened in the end? Cecilia is a ruthless person who kills her boyfriend and his brother, and perfectly clears herself and avenges herself.
