Leigh Whannell

There’s virtually no dialogue in the first five minutes of The Invisible Man, but that doesn’t stop the director Leigh Whannell from telling you everything you need to know. We open in the dead of night, on a woman lying awake in bed, her partner’s arm slung across her waist like a fleshy chain. Her eyes wide with anxiety, she silently extricates herself from his grasp, then tiptoes through their opulent beachside home, packing a bag and disabling the alarm. She also deactivates the house’s many security cameras, except for one: the feed from the bedroom, which she routes to her phone and keeps glancing at in panic, worried that her jailer might have risen. As she quietly maneuvers toward the exit and her freedom, the tension mounts, with various obstacles—a dog’s dish, a car’s sensor, a looming enclosure—conspiring to impede her escape.

It’s the first of many gripping sequences in the movie, an expertly orchestrated medley of image, sound, and music. Yet beyond highlighting Whannell’s considerable craft, the opening is meaningful for the way it telegraphs the film’s metaphorical intentions. The Invisible Man is, quite simply, a picture about domestic abuse. It examines how powerful men feel entitled to possess beautiful women, resulting in violence that’s both physical and emotional. And it contemplates how such subjugation corrodes victims’ health and self-worth, how it can be toxic and dehumanizing. Also, there’s an invisible man. Read More