The Invisible

The Invisible is a sloppily assembled thriller full of flat performances and dull dialogue. Its beginning skulks along like some horrid after school special, and even though it eventually finds some narrative footing, it still cannot deliver something fully satisfying. It’s mostly just a half-baked film overall, which, I guess is better than being a complete disaster. The general premise of the film revolves around high school golden boy Nick Powell, (Justin Chatwin) who is left for dead after being accused of ratting out a brooding, burglary prone classmate named Annie (Margarita Levieva) and finds himself wandering around the remnants of his life as an invisible specter hoping to reunite itself with his barely breathing body. Chris Marquette also stars as Nick’s best friend as does Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden as Nick’s icy mother in mourning.

The problem with the film’s beginning is simply that the movie actually turns too dark too fast. Within minutes you’ve got dead parents, drunken parents, violent assaults, robberies, fights, tears and every other soap opera device under the sun being employed even though the characters are supposed to simply be average 18 year-olds. It’s a stretch to say the least. I’m all for dark storytelling, but when you pile on so much with so little honest dramatic power to back it up, it all just ends up seeming false and contrived. The movie never really earns its darkness. It simply wears it like a costume. It shuffles through one lame façade after another achieving commitment to tone only in a few fleeting glimpses of solid storytelling. After getting past the oversold suburban dystopia scenario that wreaks havoc on the film’s first third or so, you get to its sort of entertaining if completely preposterous core. The circumstances of Nick’s death are so stupid and so unbelievable that it takes a while for you to forget and be willing to accept the situation as it exists, with Nick trying to connect to his killer just enough to prove he is alive and convince her to find his body. Nick’s post mortem bond to the troubled Annie becomes a solid narrative conceit even if Goyer lays in the melodrama a little too strongly. Too many scenes, though, even in this somewhat successful segment just don’t connect as they need too. As Nick reconnects with his life, it’s so obvious that his death will realign his perspective that watching it all happen seems tedious.

Even the good parts of this film get compromised by David Goyer’s muddled, mood killingly manic directorial style. Goyer is a director overly fond of his own technique. He deadens many scenes with unneeded camera tricks and music so savvy it reeks of desperation. You might think the movie is moving along nicely, but then suddenly Goyer will toss in a functionless crane shot or two, some weird slow motion moments, and meld it together with a Snow Patrol song that you’ve probably already heard a dozen times already and which doesn’t fit at all with the tone of the film.

After getting lost in theatrics and meandering melodrama, the film finally closes with an obnoxiously preposterous and unexplained scene of supposed sadness (with a random crane shot, of course). Then, it launches into an even more despicable coda sequence that is probably one of the most inappropriately schmaltzy endings I have ever seen. Oh, and of course, there’s yet another crane shot just in case you hadn’t had your full of unnecessary swooping camera movements just yet.

Grade: C