STACK #188 June 2020

FEATURE FILM

Back in 2017, Universal were poised to launch a Marvel-like ‘Dark Universe’ that would revive the studio’s iconic monsters with a cast of A-listers attached, including Johnny Depp confirmed to play the Invisible Man. But when the Tom Cruise-led launch film The Mummy flopped at the box office, it was lights out for the Dark Universe. While the return of The Invisible Man this year suggests the studio may have revised its plans, Leigh Whannell confirms that this isn’t the case. “The way it was explained to me is that this is a one-off film. I never felt any pressure from Universal or Blumhouse to incorporate ideas from other movies, and I felt very free to make a stand-alone story and wasn’t micromanaged in that regard at all.” But if Whannell had the opportunity to put his stamp on another classic Universal monster, which one would he choose? “It’s funny, now that we’re here talking about this film, I would have to say that the Invisible Man was it,” he laughs. “In my mind, this was the character that presented the most opportunity. I love Dracula and the other iconic villains, but I feel that everything has been said about those characters that needed to be said. Whereas I felt the Invisible Man didn’t have the same cultural footprint as Dracula or Frankenstein, so there was the freedom to mess with it and bring it into a modern context.”

Eiza Gonzalez as KT

Elisabeth Moss & LeighWhannell

• The Invisible Man

is out on June 17

it as grounded as it possibly could be,” Whannell explains. “There have been many different iterations of the Invisible Man character. Indeed, the idea of invisibility has been explored in many films, but I felt that I hadn’t seen this version of The Invisible Man before. “I wanted to make something very cold and clinical that felt real. I was really inspired by the films of David Fincher – Gone Girl , The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Zodiac . He has this really interesting way of making thrillers that’s very clinical but beautiful.” Adding to her resume of traumatised characters, Moss delivers a committed performance, conveying fear in every glance and giving us a heroine to root for. So, how did she come to be involved with the project? “When it came time to cast the film, I realised that I had written a one-woman show – she’s literally in every scene. The list of actors who can carry a film like this on their shoulders – where you’re expected to lose your mind and go to these dark places – is a pretty short list, and I think Elisabeth is on there. She’s proven herself time and time again. “We sent her the script and suddenly I was on the phone to her, and it was kind of an awkward phone call because I was driving and my kids were in the back, screaming. So I was laughing and trying to play it down, but I couldn’t quite hear her. It wasn’t a good introduction but I spoke to her long enough to know that she’s hyper-intelligent and could pick the script apart and talk about it. “I also learned that she loves suspenseful movies and the thriller genre. When she makes The Handmaid’s Tale , she told me that her goal is to have the audience squirming, so she was really into the idea of us making The Invisible Man a really uncomfortable and stressful movie to watch. “I wanted this to be a suffocating experience from the first frame; I didn’t want to take the foot off the pedal. I wanted the audience to be uncomfortable from the very first second of the movie, and if I do my job well, holding their breath for two hours. Hopefully I’ve achieved that.”

Every day on set it was astounding to look at the crew and count off who had worked on what.” Although he was familiar with the original 1933 adaptation of H.G. Wells’s classic novel The Invisible Man , Whannell says that rebooting it wasn’t on his radar. “I would go through phases as a kid, which used to drive my Dad crazy. After a six-month Sherlock Holmes phase there would be a six- month Dracula phase, and that would finish and it would be James Bond, and it just kept going. I was an obsessive child,” he laughs. “The classic movie monsters were definitely a part of that period but I wouldn’t say that the original Invisible Man film was a touchstone for me that I was really looking to investigate.” The character had been revitalised in 2000 by director Paul Verhoeven, in the gory sci-fi-horror Hollow Man , but Whannell’s take on the Invisible Man fits more comfortably into the suspense- thriller category, incorporating topical themes of domestic violence and stalking. Elisabeth Moss ( The Handmaid’s Tal e) plays the protagonist, who after fleeing an abusive relationship discovers that her wealthy scientist ex has taken his own life. Or has he? Convinced she is being stalked by an invisible presence, she must convince those around her that she isn’t paranoid and that the unseen threat is very real… “I wanted to modernise the character and make

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