Essay: Why Leigh Whannell’s ‘The Invisible Man’ moved me to tears

Editor’s Note: there are some spoilers afoot ⏤ as well as details that could be triggering.

Four months after he nearly killed my mother, he came after me.

It was a warm March morning. It was a Saturday. I had just gotten home from planting flowers at the local park with my 4-H club. I was standing at the sink in the kitchen, which overlooked our one-acre backyard, the green grass sparkling like emeralds in the sunlight. Nothing particular was on my mind that day ⏤ but in an instant everything changed. I looked further out across the lawn to the neighbor’s, a two-story house painted baby blue, and there he stood. Frank Gibson. He was in the middle of the street. The back end of his car, some vintage ’70s model, I think, stuck out from around the corner. His profile – I’d recognize that beak and high forehead anywhere – made my blood run cold. He was talking to someone just out of view, his stick, chicken-leg-of-an-arm pointed in my direction. I couldn’t move… at least not at first.

My flight response jump started my brain somehow, and my body moved frantically to lock our many front doors ⏤ our enclosed front porch had two entrances, plus another off the living room. An earthquake tore through my body. A hard 10 on the richter scale. I had always been a little anxious, something I inherited from my mother, but that day, not quite spring but not winter either, I couldn’t even see straight. Perhaps through a sheer animalistic will, buried deep inside of me, I managed to grab our cordless house phone and hunker down in the hallway closet. My fingers scattered over the numbers. I coughed horsely into the phone, “Frank is here!” My then-step-mother, who was working a half-day at the bank that morning (my father was off installing carpet), was on the other end. What came next was a blur of panic and blinding terror. I think I was out of my body at this point. Another next door neighbor became a safe haven for the rest of the day, but not before I made a mad dash across the street, more horrifying shockwaves cascading through my chest. Would he see me? Would he catch me? Would he kill me?

The following weeks and months wrought a shocking level of paranoia. I saw him around every corner. Every car was his ⏤ he did, in fact, return some weeks later. And that was it. I never saw him again.

I imagine what my mother’s trauma must have been like, and I can see it creased between the wrinkles of her face sometimes. It’s like a mirror reflecting back a wealth of life experience, some good, some ugly. 20+ years later, she’s far less afraid of the world now, more tough, fearless, even detached in some ways. Our relationship is complicated, you could say, and I know there are days she is still just trying to cope. Like many, she is a survivor of assault that shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. An angry white man took everything from her ⏤ and nearly her life, too. But she got away.

That’s why The Invisible Man, as written and directed by Leigh Whannell (Saw, Insidious, Upgrade), starring Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale) in a powerhouse performance, cuts to the core of who I am. There are moments, like when Moss’ character Cecilia is terrified of even leaving the house, that elicited actual tears. They were uncontrollable. It was like I was gazing into a looking glass, and I’m right back to that mousey 13-year-old kid hunkering down amidst the coats, hats, and boots. Whannell builds such dread in every frame, panning away from Cecilia or other characters, and sitting statically on a corner of the room, or a sofa, or panning down a seemingly empty corridor. It’s a manifestation of paranoia that gets me the most; the slow-burning crackle of camera work drags you along for two hours, and even in the hyper-explosive violence, there is purpose to every second of it.

The unraveling of Cecilia is most agonizing to behold. After her abusive boyfriend Adrian (played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, of The Haunting of Hill House fame) fakes his own death, she is put through an excruciating wringer ⏤ and strange occurrences, such as when her bed sheet is yanked from her in the middle of the night or when her architecture portfolio goes missing, chip away at her psyche. Story beats are always calculated, mimicking trauma’s lasting effects and the outward ripples in every facet of life, from friendships to the workplace. Even mundane tasks become urgent, alarmingly suffocating, and triggering. An abuser’s fingerprints muck up your ability to really life, and Cecilia’s spiraling out is haunting and realistic.

The cast ⏤ rounded out with Aldis Hodge (as childhood friend James), Storm Reid (James’ daughter Sydney), Harriet Dyer (Cecilia’s sister Emily), and Michael Dorman (Adrian’s lawyer-practicing brother) ⏤ are branches spreading out in all directions. Each member becomes so entangled in the story, psychologically and emotionally, that the empathy you feel runs far and wide. As the stakes boil over, you not only identify with every character in some fashion, but you find yourself at the mercy of Adrian himself. He’s the abuser around every corner, pushing you to question the unseen forces constantly at work in our real lives, and you look over your shoulder out of habit. You can knock one down, but another pops up like a Whac-a-Mole.

The Invisible Man made me feel things, relive things, confront things I had perhaps forgotten all about. March 1999 is seared onto my brain, but through Leigh Whannell’s crafty filmmaking ⏤ and that score, courtesy of Benjamin Wallfisch kills ⏤ I find myself reexamining my youth, trauma, and recovery in a new way. I’m thankful for the tears ⏤ I was most visibly rattled when Adrian sliced Emily’s throat, planting the knife in Cecilia’s hand, causing her to be committed ⏤ and I wouldn’t trade a single moment of my experience. It is part of me.

Several years ago, I looked up Frank Gibson ⏤ out of perverse curiosity I guess. After my mother, he stabbed and killed a woman, his then-girlfriend Diane Howell, in 2004. WRAL reported on the crime: “Authorities said Howell and her friends were having a cookout when an altercation ensued between Howell and 47-year-old Frank Dean Gibson. During the altercation, Gibson reportedly stabbed Howell in the stomach/chest area.” Howell later died from her injuries at the hospital. She left a grieving family in her wake, and hopefully, she found peace in the afterlife she never found with him.

Diane Howell was a human being with dreams, hopes, ambitions. But she is now also a harrowing statistic, like countless other women who’ve met similar fates. That’s why a film like The Invisible Man, retooling the 1933 classic, based on H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel, as a modern domestic violence tale, is so crucial. It’s life as we know it in 2020.

For anonymous, confidential help available 24/7, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY) now.

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