I’ll admit, I write off certain movies just as much as anyone else. Without even seeing any trailers, I figured the new Invisible Man movie would be crap purely because it’s “another tired reboot of an old franchise,” and especially given the track record of other recent Universal Monster reboots, I just didn’t really think this one would be any different. Then, after seeing the trailer, I just kind of confirmed how I felt. I thought that it looked generic and wouldn’t be anything special. I wasn’t planning on seeing The Invisible Man, until I heard a bunch of positive reception around the movie, with really high Rotten Tomatoes scores and reviewers that I watch highly recommending the movie. So, I decided to give it a chance, and I’m really glad that I did.

The movie really doesn’t share much of a plot from the original Invisible Man movies aside from just featuring a man that’s invisible. Instead, the movie decides to go the route of being about something “important,” and so what we have here is a story about escaping domestic abuse hidden beneath a horror movie. The movie opens with our protagonist Cecilia escaping her home in the middle of the night from her abusive, rich, billionaire boyfriend Adrian. She fully expects Adrian to come looking for her, which is why she’s so surprised when a few weeks later she receives news that Adrian has killed himself. However, it soon becomes apparent that Adrian is still stalking her, but he’s doing it in a way that’s making everyone convinced that she’s going crazy. He seems to have found a way to turn himself invisible, and is tormenting her in a way that no one else believes it’s really happening.

It’s one of those premises that just works really well, and so it makes for a really exciting and accessible horror movie. This is the kind of horror movie where there’s a constant feeling of tension throughout the whole movie. The scenes are really well-crafted in a way that makes you consistently nervous about what’s going to happen next. A great example of this is how the movie uses this technique where a shot just lingers on an empty room for about 10 seconds. Sometimes, nothing happens, but others times it does, and so as the viewer we’re constantly on alert for where Adrian is and what he’s doing. It’s really effective, and helps add to the movie.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like this is one of my absolute favorite horror movies in recent years or anything. However, it’s a really solid movie, and one that I enjoyed way more than I ever thought I would. Like I said, I’ve seen plenty of crappy horror reboots that I kind of just write off most of them before I even see them, but The Invisible Man serves as an example of how you shouldn’t judge these things until you see them for yourselves. It reminds me that real people work on these things, and so while there’s definitely movies that are rushed out by studios to make a quick buck, there’s also some really passionate people that work on some of these and want to make the best movie they possibly can. That really shines through with The Invisible Man. I highly recommend it, because it turned out way better than I ever thought it would.

4/5