This version of The Invisible Man, is less about the Invisible man and far more about an indestructible woman named Cecilia Kass played effectively by Elizabeth Moss.
Other renderings of the H. G. Wells science fiction book such as Claude Rains in 1933 with Gloria Stuart as his girlfriend revolve around the individual who we can’t see. Rains is hunted and discovered through his foot prints in the snow. Kevin Bacon became the Hollow Man in 2000 and had difficulty carry the burden on being invisible. Here Cecilia Kass begins the story by escaping from a wealthy scientist Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) in the middle of the night. She attempts to disappear not visually but following the reported death of Griffin who leaves her five million dollars, she begins to see him when no one else can see his image.
Cecilia hides with her friend James (Aldis Hodge) and his daughter Sydney (Storm Reid) but the appearance of her reported dead controlling man causes Cecilia to be placed in an institution. With an atmosphere created similar to what Ingrid Bergman faced in Gas Light we are not sure if she is nuts or if she has an intuition and fully understands the experiment by the visual scientist, Adrian Griffin who continues to play with her head throughout the film.
With some bloody scenes and the destruction of a series of security guards at the institution she is held in, the film at times becomes a little silly. But when she discovers a suit that uses cameras to render the wearer invisible she has the power. I guess it’s like the TV car add that states it can make a trailer behind a car disappear. Here the suit works and she is haunted through out the film.
The sets, particularly the modern mansion which she escapes from and ends up in are beautiful to look at and Elizabeth Moss provides a fine performance both with emotion and difficult physically challenging scenes.
H. G. Wells would not recognize the story, it is different, but the final two twists are worth waiting for and watching.