The Invisible

David S. Goyer's The Invisible is a very bad movie about very stupid people doing things we couldn't really care about. That's because the movie isn't clever enough to make us care about them. It simply sits there, spinning its wheels, and repeating the same kind of scenes over and over. The film's ad campaign would like you to believe that this is somewhat of a teen retread of 1990's Ghost, about a young man who is killed and has to try to solve his own murder. The thing is, the kid's not dead. He's in some sort of strange limbo area between life and death. It probably would have been easier if he was dead, because screenwriters Mick Davis and Christine Roum constantly change the rules, so we're never quite sure what to think.

The film centers on an angst-filled teen named Nick Powell (Justin Chatwin from 2005's War of the Worlds remake). He likes to write poetry and has dreams of escaping from his emotionally distant widowed mother (Marcia Gay Harden), and take a writer's course in London. His travel plans are cut short when a troubled girl at his school named Annie (Margarita Leviera) is busted for stealing, and she is led to believe that Nick is the one who squealed on her. Annie and her friends extract their revenge by beating Nick senseless in the middle of the woods late one night. When it looks like he's suffered a fatal fall, the hooligans try to cover up their actions. Nick awakens the next morning, somehow completely unaware of the fact that he shouldn't even be walking around after the events of the night before. He does not go home, but rather goes straight to school and discovers that for some reason, no one can see or hear him. It takes Nick a lot longer than it takes us to figure it out, and even after he's figured it out, he still keeps on trying in vain to make someone hear him even though he knows no one can. Eventually, our hero is able to put the pieces together and discovers that he's not actually dead, but rather in a near-death state. He has to somehow get a person's attention, and lead them to where his body is. When it's eventually discovered that Annie can for some reason hear him or at least sense him, he will have to rely on the help of his attacker to find out who set him up and fix all of this.

Perhaps The Invisible would be easier to enjoy if the lead character wasn't as dumb as dirt. As I mentioned before, he doesn't even seem to find it curious that he's up and walking around without any pain or bleeding after being beaten within an inch of his life and falling a great distance just hours before. He obviously remembers what happened in the woods, so why doesn't he stop and pause to try to figure out how his miraculous recovery is even possible? When he arrives at school, he finds that no one can hear him, nor is he able to manipulate objects. He picks up a student's text book and throws it angrily across the room, knocking some objects down, only to glance again and see the text book still sitting on the desk and the objects still in their proper place as if nothing has happened. Okay, so he learns fairly quickly that it's futile to manipulate objects. Then why does he keep on trying to manipulate them time and time again throughout the movie? He gets the same results every time, and he always seems surprised when it happens. Another curious scene is when he tries to shoot himself with the rifle mounted on the wall of his home, even though at the time this scene happens, he thinks he's dead. Why would he think to kill himself if he thinks he's already dead? Nick never seems to think things through, and keeps on trying the same tactics over and over, even though he knows it's a lost cause. You get the sense that if this kid was told not to touch a stove because it was hot, he would go ahead and touch it anyway, just to see how hot it is.

So, people can't hear him, right? How then is Annie able to hear him? The movie conveniently leaves out this detail. At first, she doesn't seem to be able to hear him whenever he's around, but then late in the film, there is an out of the blue revelation that she can sense someone calling her name or talking to her. Previously, only animals seemed to be able to sense that Nick was around. The movie changes its own rules late in the game, because if it didn't, it would be a hopeless situation for Nick. Things get even more confusing when it appears that not only can Annie sense Nick, but she can hear him, talk to him, and even speak for him. There's a scene where Nick starts talking through Annie so that his mom can hear his words. Is he possessing her? Is he controlling her? Are they sharing a telepathic moment? Who knows, really? It's almost as if the writers were making the story up as they went along, hoping no one would notice. But we do notice, because this is not a very interesting movie. It repeats the same scenes over and over with Nick either trying to talk to someone and failing, or trying to manipulate something and failing. Nothing much of interest happens during the course of the film, and it seems that director David S. Goyer (Blade: Trinity) was left to simply try to kill as much time as he could to fill a 100 minute movie.

Much like the movie itself, the characters never seem to go anywhere. Not only is Nick an incredibly stupid person, but he's not very interesting to begin with. He has no real personality traits other than that he's angry with his mom for not supporting his dream of being a writer. We don't learn much about him beyond that, so it's kind of hard to pull for the kid to get his life back when it didn't really seem like he had much of one to start with. Justin Chatwin does what he can, but his performance is hindered by the shallow character. Margarita Leviera comes across a little bit better as Annie, simply because the movie seems more interested in her character. She does a good job at playing all the different sides of her character, and is mainly able to come across as sympathetic. Everyone else simply disappears into the background as they are either mere shells with no character traits at all, or not interesting enough to grab our attention. In particular, the very talented Marcia Gay Harden is stuck with a thankless role that obviously got no attention at the screenplay level. I can only hope she got a nice paycheck off of this movie, and that she can tackle a real role soon.
The Invisible was not screened for critics this weekend, and it's easy to see why. This movie would be laughed right off the screen by anyone seeking something resembling entertainment. It's dumb, it's labored, and it fails to go anywhere or captivate us in even the slightest. Like the character of Nick, it can't seem to figure itself out, so it just keeps on doing the same thing and making the same mistakes. The idea probably could have worked if we were following a semi-intelligent and interesting person trying to get his life back. Trying to root for Nick to get his life back is a lot like trying to root for termites to infest your wooden furniture.

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