The Invisible Man

Another Black History Month has come and gone, and while we did gain an extra day this year, that’s about all we got. We couldn’t even get five minutes into our 800th viewing of The Color Purple before the damn Coronavirus broke out and started grabbing everyone’s attention. It couldn’t have come out a month before when everyone was cooped up inside because of the cold weather? The breakout would’ve ended right then and there because we were all too busy ordering tacos from Uber Eats, watching hours upon hours of Netflix, and banging each other senseless; no one was going outside to spread germs!

But no, it had to reach its peak in February, so instead of hearing about Frederick Douglas and George Washington Carver, we get to hear how the economy is going to hell because Becky and Daryl are too scared to go out to Whole Foods and get their kale salad for fear of getting sick; never mind the fact that Becky and Daryl just had unprotected sex the night before. The HPV vaccine doesn’t protect you from everything Becky, I’m just saying.

But enough complaining about a glorified flu (update - the Coronavirus turned out to be very real) and picking on poor Becky with the good hair. We did get one final treat before March hit and that was the release of The Invisible Man. Sadly no, this was not an adaptation of the book by Ralph Ellison, this was a horror movie starring one of the palest movie stars in the game today, Elisabeth Moss. Why was this a treat for Black people? Well it’s because Black people LOVE horror films, even though we are always the first ones to die in them. It gives us a chance to see someone else die and/or run for their lives for a change. It’s cathartic for us! Now I realize that we are way too loud in the movie theater and I know that we always sneak in food (possibly Popeye’s) and smell like weed but hey, it’s our one month to act up. This is our 28 day Get Out of Jail free card. Okay, bad example but you get my point. Just let us yell at people trying to escape from axe murderers for once, we only get so many pleasures in this life.

So naturally I go see The Invisible Man opening night and I of course wind up sitting next to a Black lady who legit sneaked in an entire meal. It smelled like I was at a family reunion BBQ. It was fantastic! But just before I could ask for a rib and a scoop of potato salad, the lights went down and the movie started. Blumhouse Studios have become the masters of making good low budget horror films. It forces the directors to rely on storytelling, camera angles, and good old fashion acting to make the movies work. They can’t just simply throw a bunch of money into terrible CGI to try and make the monsters scary, they actually have to be good at film making. And that’s exactly what we got in this film.

At first, I don’t think that even Elisabeth Moss thought that this was going to be a good film. You could tell that early on she was mailing it in but as the story kept unfolding and she realized that this was in fact a pretty decent story, she put her acting chops on full display and you could see why she’s quickly becoming an A-list star. For those who haven’t seen the trailer, the premise is her husband has died and left her quite a bit of money, however in order for her to be eligible to receive the money she must not be arrested for any criminal activity and she cannot be found to be mentally incompetent. Which, anyone who knows me, knows that those requirements immediately put me on the outside looking in.

But before he dies, you get a small glimpse into what their relationship was like. It’s full on Sleeping with the Enemy mode. They live in a phat home right on the beach and her husband controls her every move and thought as there are security cameras everywhere. We only know this because, like Julia Roberts, she’s trying to sneak out in the middle of the night without him knowing. Now at first, I thought this was going to fail because nothing can be scarier than some British dude with a Tom Selleck mustache sneaking up from behind you and forcing you to have sex to Berlioz’s haunting symphony. “Yo dude, can we at least get some Wham? Make me feel special!”

But the director establishes early on what kind of fright fest you’re in store for. The entire time she’s trying to escape, the camera slowly pans away to what appears to be empty and quiet parts of the house, but the longer the shot stays there, the longer you question if she’s really by herself. It perfectly captures the creepy feeling we have when we think we’re being watched or followed. And this continues throughout the entirety of the movie.

Now most people will pick up early on that it’s not in fact a ghost that is haunting her due to a pretty obvious giveaway in the film but the bolder this thing or being gets, the more you realize that it is in fact scarier than a British dude with a mustache. By the time this invisible thing decides to take on an entire police station, you’re convinced that it’s the ghost of Suge Knight trying to kidnap as many white women as he possibly can.

I will say that they spent so much time and effort on the first two acts of the film that by the time the final scene came around, it felt like everyone, including Moss, was exhausted and just kind of rushed through the final scene. So, in that sense, it kind of fell flat but thankfully it wasn’t enough to kill, no pun intended, everything that took place before it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film and I give it a rating of pretty FRESH!