![]() Things start happening for which she cannot account. As Cecelia comes to suspect that Adrian isn’t dead, her life begins to unravel. Most obviously, it ties into the way that Whannell subtly reworks the tropes of The Invisible Man as an allegory for an abusive relationship. It is a potent visual metaphor on a number of levels. The entire world exists to be consumed by its gaze, processed, and spit back out. ![]() Adrian has built a suit that does nothing but look. However, metaphorically, they serve to weaponise the male gaze. Logically, this is just an explanation of the mechanics invisibility – the cameras take in the light and project it out again to create the illusion of empty space, allowing light to indirectly pass through the object. They resemble nothing so much as hundreds of eyes staring outwards. Those cameras are constantly adjusting and focusing, moving and buzzing. Its surface is comprised entirely of cameras. When Cecelia does get a look at some of the projects that Adrian was working on before his death, she discovers a mysterious suit. However, the tech industry setting of The Invisible Man does more than extend a criticism of the contemporary face of hypermasculine hypercapitalism. Indeed, The Invisible Man keeps coming back to Adrian’s attempts to own Cecelia, whether through a five million dollar trust after his death or in attempts to assert direct control over her body. The Invisible Man ultimately positions such abuse and manipulation as a grotesque extension of capitalism. Adrian was so invested in controlling and dominating Cecilia because she resisted him, because she existed outside his world. “You didn’t need him,” Tom tells Cecelia. In a later conversation, almost as a direct response to a question he could not possibly have heard, Adrian’s brother Tom seems to offer an explanation. Money and power would have allowed Adrian to “buy people.” “Why did you choose me?” Cecilia asks at one point. (More broadly, it also taps into the attitude towards women that have taken root in the so-called “rationalist” communities that are often rooted around tech.) The Invisible Man even contextualises Cecilia’s relationship to Adrian in such terms. Most obviously, it taps into the tech industry’s long-standing issues around the treatment of women. This is a canny piece of modernisation on a number of levels. His basement functions as a personal computer laboratory. Adrian is described as an “optics pioneer” and a “world-leader in optics.” He lives and operates in San Francisco. (This is often the case in indirect adaptations, like Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man.) In contrast, Whannell immediately contextualises The Invisible Man as a product of technology. Indeed, some stories even go so far as to suggest that that the process has some impact on the subject’s neorochemistry, to account for his inevitable immorality. Historically, adaptations of The Invisible Man have focused on biological explanations for the invisibility. ![]() More to the point, The Invisible Man and Upgrade both tap into anxieties about the modern technology industry. The central conceit of The Invisible Man requires the same sort of surreal one-actor stuntwork that defined Upgrade, where a lot of the visual power of the set pieces comes from watching a body doing something that it should not be able to do unassisted. Adrian’s clifftop house in The Invisible Man recalls the sleak modernist design of Eron Keen’s estate in Upgrade. The Invisible Man feels very much of a piece with Whannel’s last low-budget science-fiction horror film, Upgrade. The Invisible Man features several crackerjack sequences, but none as unsettling as that opening beat. ![]() Even drugged and unconscious, his presence is keenly felt. This is the power that Adrian holds over Cecilia. The camera horizontally pans through their spacious modern home, as if to suggest that Adrian is lurking in the shadows, even when a glance at her phone screen confirms he is still lying in the bed. As Cecilia creeps through the house, Whannell’s camera remains tightly focused on negative space. The sequence is a master class in tension, with Adrian serving as something of a sleeping monster. Whannell communicates a lot very quickly and effectively, without recourse to expository dialogue Cecilia’s desperate drugging of Adrian with diazepam, the internal security cameras that watch her ever move, the alarm system designed to keep her in as much as anybody out. It’s one of the most tense sequences in recent memory. The opening few minutes are given over to Cecilia’s escape from Adrian. One of the movie’s most unsettling and effective scenes doesn’t involve any supernatural or science-fiction elements. The Invisible Man is not a particular subtle piece of metaphor.
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