At first glance, you might think The Invisible would be a simple revenge story, like a teenaged version of Ghost. A high school student is beaten and left for dead mere weeks before graduation, and his spirit roams the city looking for his killers. The problem is, no one can see or hear him, so it's not exactly clear what he can do once he does find the culprits. Even so, he tracks them down, and as he follows them and spies on them—and on his mother, and on his friend, and on various other people—he discovers that there are aspects of their lives that were just as invisible to him as he now is to them. In short, he begins to feel compassion for some of them.

Justin Chatwin as Nick Powell

Justin Chatwin as Nick Powell

If only it were as easy for the audience to feel for the characters. As it is, some of the key players tend to be either off-putting or unconvincing. The victim, Nick Powell (Justin Chatwin, last seen as Tom Cruise's son in War of the Worlds), is first seen at a graduation party hosted by his mother (Marcia Gay Harden), where he vandalizes a cake before going downstairs and sticking a rifle in his mouth. Whoops, it was just a dream! But this is still how the movie chooses to introduce Nick, by focusing on his adolescent self-absorption, and the opening scene doesn't exactly endear him to us.

As we get to know Nick, we learn that he's a smart boy from a well-to-do family who is fed up with his widowed mother and her plans for his future. He has dreams of becoming a poet, and so he plans to leave town without telling her; in the meantime, he sells essays to his cheating classmates, and his relationship with one local girl could be best described as unfulfilling. In short, the film doesn't give us much reason to care about him, one way or the other, before he is beaten and left for dead—and when his spirit begins yelling at people and giving full vent to his rage, safe in the knowledge that no one can hear him, he doesn't become any more likable.

Now you see him …

Now you see him …

Then there is Nick's would-be killer, Annie Newton (Margarita Levieva), who seems a tad too attractive—even under her black clothes, her toque, and her hood—to qualify as a "bad girl." At first you may think that the filmmakers have simply made a mistake and cast a sulky model in a role that should have called for less prettiness and more grittiness. But then you begin to suspect the decision was deliberate, and the reason they cast an outwardly beautiful actress in the role was because they knew of no other way to convey the inner beauty of the character. This suspicion is ultimately confirmed when Annie, seeking a respite from her guilt and the various people who seem to be preying on it, goes to a dance club and rips off her toque, thus revealing her long, flowing, curly hair. At last, we can see who she really is!

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To give credit where it is due, The Invisible is refreshingly restrained when it comes to the sort of special effects that one normally associates with this sort of film. There are no shots of ghosts walking through doors or rising out of bodies or fading into oblivion; for the most part, the film relies on good old-fashioned editing to suggest that things and people simply changed or moved while we weren't looking.

Nick and Annie (Margarita Levieva)

Nick and Annie (Margarita Levieva)

The closest thing this film has to a gimmick is the way that Nick repeatedly seems to be able to intervene in the world for a few seconds—but then he discovers that everything is still exactly where he found it. If he picks up a book and throws it, Nick sees the book fly, but then he turns back to the desk, and he sees that the book is still there. And if Nick grabs a person and throws her off a building, he sees the person fall, but then he looks back to where the person was standing and he sees that she is still there. The only real-world objects that Nick is capable of affecting, it seems, are animals—but even then, they don't necessarily do his bidding!

Thankfully, The Invisible seems to follow its own rules … for the most part … though there are inevitably one or two exceptions that leave you scratching your head, particularly as the film reaches its climax. You have to give the film credit for trying to tell a story of redemption rather than revenge, but the characters themselves are a pretty morbid lot (virtually every teenager with more than a few lines of dialogue tries to commit murder or suicide at some point), and by the end, when they say things like "I see you!" over and over, the film may seem too heavy-handed.

Incidentally, all the graduation banners that we see in this film are dated 2006. The Invisible is a remake of a Swedish movie from a few years back, and it is directed by David S. Goyer, a frequent writer of comic-book movies whose last directorial effort, Blade: Trinity, was easily the dullest entry in that series. The Invisible was shot in the fall of 2005 and was presumably going to be released the following summer, but instead it sat on the shelf and got dumped on a slow weekend in the spring of 2007, and without any preview screenings. None of these facts bodes well, do they?

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Talk About It

Discussion starters
  1. Have you ever felt "invisible"? Have you ever discovered something about someone else and wondered how you could have missed that about them?
  2. Annie tells Nick that he's no better than her because he sells essays to cheating students, just as she deals in stolen goods. Do you agree with her? Would this be a reason to become more compassionate to either of these characters?
  3. Nick yells at Annie that she should not blame anyone else for her actions. Does the film incline you to think that she is responsible for everything she has done? Do her circumstances—her family, her friends—excuse her actions to any degree?
  4. What do you make of the angel necklace that Annie inherited from her mother? Why do you think the film makes both of the main characters half-orphans? Could they have come to "see" the good in each other if they did not have this in common?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Invisibleis rated PG-13 for violence (including shootings and beatings), criminality (including theft), sensuality (including some fully-clothed activity on a bed, and a blurred shot of a girl showering) and language (a few four-letter words)—all involving teens.

What other Christian critics are saying:

The Invisible
Our Rating
1½ Stars - Weak
Average Rating
 
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Mpaa Rating
PG-13 (for violence, criminality, sensuality and language—all involving teens)
Directed By
David S. Goyer
Run Time
1 hour 42 minutes
Cast
Justin Chatwin, Margarita Levieva, Marcia Gay Harden
Theatre Release
April 27, 2007 by Buena Vista Pictures
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