[Spoilers for The Invisible Man below]
The Invisible Man, director Leigh Whannell’s elevated shlock hit, has a Movie Theater Moment, the kind of scene that makes you glad you saw it in a packed theater, not by yourself at home on Netflix. Or as I like to call it, a normal Friday night.
It happens about midway through the movie during a sit-down dinner between Cecilia (played by Elisabeth Moss) and her sister Emily. If you saw it, you know it. I will never forget the sound of a near-sold-out movie theater gasping and yelling “oh my god!” in unison. There are two other Movie Theater Moments at the end of The Invisible Man, first when Cecilia discovers that it’s not her supposedly deceased abuser Adrian wearing the suit but his “jellyfish” brother, and later, after Adrian has been discovered alive, when Cecilia returns to his house and uses the cloaking device to slit his throat.
It’s intentionally ambiguous whether it was Adrian in control the entire time (although his “surprise” should tip the scales towards “obviously”), but Moss believes it was his doing. “The brother did maybe this or that on the side to kind of help things out, but [Adrian] orchestrated the entire thing,” the actress told USA Today. “He had the suit, he designed it. He chose to use it in the way that he did. So his brother is one of the victims.”
Whannell was more reluctant to discuss the ending:
“I wouldn’t ever challenge someone’s view of a film of mine. It’s the audience’s job to unpack it and take away their own meaning. So I would never want to answer those questions only because I wouldn’t want to dilute your view of the movie by saying, ‘Well, here’s the correct answer.’ Truth is, there’s no correct answer.”
If only we had Russell Crowe to explain the ending to us. Alas.
(Via USA Today)
