The Invisible (2007)

Directed by: David S. Goyer | 106 minutes | action, drama, fantasy, thriller | Actors: Justin Chatwin, Margarita Levieva, Marcia Gay Harden, Christopher Marquette, Michelle Harrison, Alex O’Loughlin, Callum Keith Rennie, Ryan Kennedy, Andrew Francis, P. Lynn Johnson, Serge Houde, Desiree Zurowski, Mark Houghton, Alex Ferris, Tania Saulnier, Kevin McNulty, Laara Sadiq, Aleks Holtz, Cory Monteith, Maggie Ma, Sefton Fincham, Ron Selmour, Colby Wilson, Mi-Jung Lee, Jason Diablo, Leanne Adachi, Chris Shields, Panou, Michael Tayles, Christopher Heyerdahl, Andrew Coghlan

What a surprise, that surprise film at the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival. Normally a film that many festival visitors look forward to. A film by a cult director, or just one with a high party content, where there is a lot of cheering or laughing. Something like the crazy martial arts film ‘Kung Fu Hustle’, the surprise film from 2005. But no, in 2007 there is less opportunity for enthusiasm. That is to say, ‘The Invisible’ can be laughed at, but for all the wrong reasons. This supernatural teen film pretends to tell a deeply tragic, philosophical story but eventually gets bogged down in clichés and melodrama, while the thriller plot also offers little excitement.

Still, the premise is quite original – at least it was in the original Swedish film this is an adaptation of – and the emphasis on drama rather than cheap shock or horror is very welcome. Unfortunately, the implementation is too simple. Important plot revelations are already known to the viewer well in advance and the dramatic insights of the characters are not exactly earth-shattering. For example, the “relationship” that the (near-)dead and ghost-haunting Nick builds with the rebellious Annie is interesting and to some extent moving, but the parallel between Nick as a literal ghost and troubled teenagers who are figuratively invisible to their surroundings is very obvious. And when Nick only sees Annie with different eyes when she literally gets a different look – by simply taking off her hat in a disco and then revealing her curls while dancing – it all seems a bit simple. “Oh, so actually she’s a very beautiful and sensitive girl, who uses her sober hat and clothes to cut herself off from the world.”

Yet the drama is not entirely unsatisfactory. Especially the way we penetrate Annie’s head, and how she deals with her own guilt, is effective. The handy thing about the gimmick of Nick’s wandering mind is that he can now, as it were, shape Annie’s conscience. He comes close to her, sometimes expresses her (possible) thoughts, and sometimes seems to be able to get through to her when he calls or addresses her. Annie then looks dreamy or sad, or quickly looks back in the hallway to see if she might see Nick. The beauty of this is that the situation is open to more than one interpretation. In fact, she behaves no differently in her processing than any other person who has just lost a loved one. The supernatural aspect thus becomes irrelevant, or merely a means of imagining a processing process.

Herein lies the (limited) value of the film. Not in the thriller element, nor in Nick’s sometimes laughable attempts to contact or direct the living. Tiresome are the gimmicky moments where the viewer initially sees a physical interaction between ghost Nick and a living person or object, then the film rewinds only to find that nothing happened. The person in question has not been knocked over and the phone is still hanging on the wall. Once is nice, but getting stuck with this trick over and over is frustrating. So a disappointment, this film by David S. Goyer, who puts down a somewhat tame production. ‘The Invisible’ has nowhere the spunk and unpretentious character of the ‘Blade’ films he wrote, for example. Anyway back to no-nonsense superhero movies, then?