Review: THE INVISIBLE MAN

Cecilia quietly escapes her abusive husband one night and leaves their designer home through the back way through his bizarre looking laboratory and runs to freedom. Freedom is tough as the PTSD still grips hard, even after news of her tormentor's suicide comes through. He's left her a lot of money with attached legal and sanity clauses. She starts to feel watched in her new home which starts to act like a poltergeist has moved in. No one believes her and she grits her teeth and bears it until the stakes are raised horrifying levels and she has a life or death cause to prove.

Meanwhile, the presence of the thing in her house that follows her everywhere grows nastier with behaviour breaking into some hard physical violence. It's the kind of violence that her ex might well escalate to if he knows that not only can he get away with it but that no one will believe his victim when she talks about it. This tough representation of domestic violence which packs in both physical assault and gaslighting on a massive scale might quickly run its course but Leigh Whannell in his difficult second album keeps the helm steady through surprisingly deep waters. Surprising because as co-creator of the Saws and Conjurings we're more used to him coming up with toy horror movies with stopwatch-timed jump scares and Halloween costume ghosties. This is as deep a plunge into real social issues as you can get before you crash through the mainstream wall and get into Ken Loach starkness. But it's a tautly constructed thriller with a sci-fi garnish that doesn't waste a second of its two hours on screen.

Part of why we don't mind spending the time, apart from the expertly handled action, lives in the casting of Elizabeth Moss in the lead. From the white-knuckled fragility of the survivor of abuse to the incredulity at a life again hit by abuse to the fury she must muster for the pushback, Moss goes through everything she has. Magnetic and powerful she owns her every scene (almost every one in the film). One second act moment is worth a note: she has resolved to believe that her abuser is invisible and in the house and sits, armed at the end of her room. She imagines he is in the doorway and addresses him in tones that she only now, her back literally against the wall, can find. The silent reverse shots of the doorway threaten to reveal something sudden and violent and we get the sense that the strength of her gaze, her words and voice alone are stopping the antagonist who, unable to conceive of them, hasn't planned on them and is surprised into his silence.

I have to note, also, the pleasure of a solid electronics-led score that can turn a scene from safe to weird and lightless in seconds and so dominate that its almost visible. The great bursts of real orchestra at key scenes didn't bother me as it might as this other choice was made and demonstrates the value of choosing a composer and letting them have at it. I'll be noting the future work of Benjamin Wallfish.

Leigh Whannell has done what few do in prising himself from a partner role in self-avowed popcorn cinema into use of the mainstream rules to speak of serious things. It reminds me of how the 2014 horror film It Follows used a trope of old slasher movies (sex=death) to broaden it out into a greater question of shared responsibility. A similar trek has happened here as H.G. Wells's fable of corrupting power has been brought into a tightly framed adaptation of a true life horror that fills the news. Yes, it breaks into battle in the third act - it is and must continue to be a mainstream movie - but along the way we have been shown again that even popcorn can teach us something about our tastes.

Review: THE LIGHTHOUSE

Willem Dafoe (this is true) in a speech about
his cooked lobster.

A novice and an old hand travel to a lighthouse on a rock somewhere off the coast of North America. The young man is quickly disabused by the elder of the possibility of him tending the light. Instead, his duties will be menial. The older man takes the opportunity to establish the distribution of power. This will keep happening and each time it does the performance of the pushback will be greater, more flamboyant and harsher. It's a living and it's only for four weeks and he's here now so at worst it's a few stories in the pub down the line.

But it's hard and only gets harder. His chores are difficult and he's given little instruction. Left to himself he finds the eroticism of a carved mermaid he found in his mattress a distraction and even powerful nourishment for his imagination. And on the island with the pushiest seagulls in the seven seas he has a vent for his frustrations. Above him, in the lighthouse gallery, the old wickie keeps an eye, chastising him over dinner for poor work or inviting bad luck by attacking the gulls.

The development of this relationship occupies almost all of the running time and for much of it the thought occurs that like the young man's lumping of his lot we are in for the kind of buddy movie that Samuel Beckett might have imagined. However, we are only given enough to follow as, piece by piece, a genuine narrative arc will appear and be fulfilled. All I'll say of that is that the ending will make sense to you if you have a passing knowledge of Greek mythology. My own is not more than glancing but I did get it and if it is giving you trouble plug a keyword description of what you see in the final shot into Google and you'll see, too.

Robert Eggers shoots in deep monochrome in a frame closer to a square than academy ratio, keeping the action and scenes breathless and claustrophobic. His two strong main cast maintain a near constant wrestle, verbal or physical, and we have so trouble understanding the powerplay. It's important here as without such concrete character establishment we would soon be lost in the increasingly interwoven fantasy images served us. Almost all of these are from the younger man and can render mermaids from the spray or turn the wickie into Poseidon with death ray eyes. Eggers isn't trying for an updated Eraserhead nor the camp of Guy Maddin but something I'll call the A24 universe. What I mean by that is that every significant release from the A24 studio is what with varying degrees of cringe is called elevated horror or, more accurately, horror adjacent by which narratives can veer as close as they like to horror cinema without ever having to commit to the genre. You can see this in Midsommar and It Comes at Night both of which find extra texture and flavour with a pinch of genre. Eggers' own The Witch (which I found disappointing) is happy to stretch into pure genre while still (mostly) keeping its feet on the ground as a gritty period drama.

My initial feeling on leaving the cinema was that Eggers had stuck his point early and indulged himself in too much repetition, restating the conflict between the two men and the puerile depths it could sink to. Enough, already. But letting the ending absorb changed my mind. The younger man reveals a secret while drunk which returns with consequences. His ambition toward the light will also have a payback. When these tiles fall into place we really have seen something extraordinary. However alienating the constant harshness is, the literally dazzling climax will cover all that with balm. And then we get the closing image. And then I think: no, this works.