Unseen Terror: The Psychological Horror of The Invisible Man

 

H.G. Wells may have written a story about science gone wrong and the descent into madness, but the 2020 version of the plot gives the story a terrifying and personal twist. 

The Invisible Man was published in 1897 and was about a scientist called Griffin who was focusing on the study of optics. He manages to turn himself invisible but is unable to reverse it. This leads him to being isolated and developing paranoia, which in turn causes him to turn off his moral compass. 

Eventually, Griffin is killed by an angry mob who uses his footprints in the snow to find him. 

In 2020, the story of The Invisible Man was given a different treatment. Elizabeth Moss played Cecilia, a woman who is in an abusive relationship with Adrian Griffin, an optics engineer. The themes shift to abuse, fear, and gaslighting that injects horror into this sci-fi movie. 

This is how The Invisible Man stands out from other horror movies. 

The opening scene of the movie has been lauded, and it is for good reason. We see a terrified woman waking up in the middle of the night and collecting her things. She tiptoes around her sleeping boyfriend, and it becomes clear that she is trying to make a clean getaway. 

Her attempts are thwarted by a dog and the car alarm. Nevertheless, the woman, Cecilia, throws caution to the wind and runs out of the estate to where her sister is waiting. 

However, her boyfriend is now awake from his drug-induced sleep and furious that she is leaving him. 

This scene alone firmly asserts that Cecilia is terrified of her boyfriend Adrian, and that is because she feels threatened by his controlling ways. We never learn the extent of his abuse, but Cecilia, being so terrified even after leaving her boyfriend, shows the emotional damage he has inflicted on her. 

Cecilia may be living in hiding, but she has developed a fear of going outside, believing that Adrian may be waiting for her and she would once again be trapped with him. 

Her sister's coming in to inform her about Adrian’s suicide leaves her skeptical. Could the man who was so controlling and yet ingenious, truly be gone? 

Cecilia has her doubts but is able to ease only after Adrian’s brother shows her the crime scene photos and the urn that is supposed to contain Adrian’s ashes. 

Cecilia is overjoyed, and we, as an audience, are led to believe that what happens next must be Cecilia’s trauma-causing hallucinations. 

Cecilia keeps feeling that someone is with her. She feels eyes on her. Things keep falling without explanation, and when the family she is staying with is hurt, the blame falls on Cecilia. 

Could it be her? After all she went through, clearly she has begun to lose her mind and is unleashing her suppressed rage at the people who love her. 

The worst is when Cecilia is out at dinner and trying to convince her sister of the possibility of Adrian being alive, only to have a knife being picked up by invisible hands and slitting Emily’s throat. The knife then neatly falls into Cecilia’s hands. 

At this point, Cecilia, as well as the audience, is now convinced that Adrian, who was working on optics and had a suit that could make him invisible, is alive. 

But there are more twists ahead. 

All through the movie, we see Cecilia being gaslit. She can’t believe Adrian is gone, yet his threat is looming. The people who claim to love and trust her believe she is having a breakdown after her abuse. No doubt, she is thought to have PTSD. 

Cecilia is going out of her mind because no one believes her unusual story about her ex-boyfriend not only coming back from the dead but has also invented a suit to turn himself invisible to torment her. 

But the worst is when she is taken to a psychiatric facility and finds out that she is pregnant. 

That is the last thing Cecilia wants. She never wanted to get pregnant when she was with Adrian because that would cement his place in her life. She had begun taking birth control pills secretly, only to have her choice taken away ruthlessly. 

Adrian tampers with her birth control pills so that she does not become pregnant. 

When she hears him say ‘Surprise’, she is now convinced that she had failed to escape Adrian. 

He can save her from the facility, but it comes at a price. 

By this time, anyone would think that Cecilia would have succumbed to his emotional manipulation. Yet, she manages to overcome her trauma, possibly because of her pregnancy. 

Her maternal instincts may have kicked in. She did go through abuse, but there was no way she was going to let her child endure the same fate. 

And so, Cecilia decides to fight back. She manages to steal a pen and threatens to kill herself and her unborn baby. Adrian, still invisible, cannot let that happen. He interjects in her attempts, only for Cecilia to stab him and make her escape. 

There is another twist in store for her, however. When she reaches her friend’s place, he and his daughter are being attacked. Cecilia manages to intervene and retaliate against their invisible attacker. When he dies, his suit is revealed. Cecilia unmasks him to find it is Adrian’s brother. 

Adrian is alive, though, and he pretends to have been confined by his brother, who is after his fortune. 

Cecilia is exonerated because the police is now convinced that Adrian’s brother has used the invisible suit to kill her sister. 

Adrian could not have been a more despicable man. 

He abuses his girlfriend, forces her to become pregnant, uses his brother to torment Cecilia, and then frames him for all the crimes he committed. 

Cecilia also deduces this and decides to take him down.

She visits Adrian, who is smart enough not to confess his misdoings in front of her, in case she is wearing a wire. While she is wearing a wire, the officer helping her is also her friend, so she has that. 

Cecilia wears the invisible suit and kills Adrian the same way he killed her sister. In front of the cameras and the whole world, Adrian has committed suicide. 

Cecilia walks out of the house, free from Adrian and his abuse. 

The Invisible Man has no gore, no jump scares, or haunting music. It’s a simple tale, well-told, highlighting the effects of abuse. It not only shows the protagonist being gaslighted but, for a moment at least, gaslights the audience as well. We believe Adrian is gone for a moment. We believe that his brother may be behind the strange happenings. 

But in the end, we are delivered a twist that serves up a taste of what it is like to be lied to and be gaslighted. 

And for this, The Invisible Man is an exemplary psychological horror movie.