Science fiction icon H.G Wells’ oft-filmed 1897 novel gets a fresh, gloomy Victorian Gothic adaptation in “Fear the Invisible Man,” a film that is faithful to the style, themes and spirit of the novel without literally being the exact same “Invisible Man” we’ve seen on the screen before.
Mike Beckingham plays Griffin, the scientist whose discovery makes makes him a “mad scientist” here, an obssessed and broke experimenter who can’t pay his rent but whose chemical injection makes that something of a moot point.
He needs somebody who isn’t invisible to make his life work. He needs clothes to avoid freezing to death in the British weather. He needs to steal and decides he must murder to get what he wants in this sci-fi journey to the center of his psychosis.
Graham Foxe plays a homeless drunk Griffin strong-arms into becoming his confederate. When “Marvel” goes on the run and takes Griffin’s scientific papers with him, our invisible anti-hero hunts him and haunts him.
And that’s how they wind up where Griffin’s old university crush Adeline (Mhairi Calvey) lives. She’s a local reformer, and a broke widow living in a failing manor house. That’s where the wounded Griffin — injured in a public brawl in a public house (The Jolly Cricketer Pub) finds her, and she finds him.
She is shocked, and who wouldn’t be? But she hears him out and learns the limitations of this “god” like power.
His invisibility “made it impossible for me to gain wealth and power,” but “made it possible to enjoy them.” He can rob, cause “accidents” and the like. But he can’t do anything in plain sight, can’t go out clothed, unless it’s in a mummified, bandaged state.
But if he had “an army of invisible men under my command,” he could change the world. She agrees to help him track down Marvel, retrieve Griffin’s papers so that he can discover “a cure,” and she keeps his secret from the local police inspector (Wayne Gordon), even as bodies pile up as Griffin ruthlessly pursues his goals, and “helpfully” tries to sway Adeline’s political foes (the grand character actor David Hayman among them), one way or another.
“Fear the Invisible Man” is definitely a thriller on a modest budget. But director Paul Dudbridge (“Frankenstein: Legacy”) and his team manage some fine recreations — digital and otherwise — of Victorian streetscapes. They found a Gothic church that would not have been out of place in David Lean’s “Great Expectations” adaptation and nicely aged manor house that I don’t recognize from other films.
And the effects are pretty good. Cinema has a century of experience making characters “invisible.” The first filmed version of this novel was a silent short made in 1909. The transition effect here — the skin disappears, then the blood vessels and muscles and finally the skeleton — is novel and impressive.
But for all its psychological weight and cleverness, the novel is showing its age, and summoning up hoary dialogue and situations straight out of Victorian melodrama only lets us hear and see how creaky, dated and quaint this all feels. The movie bears the burden of every film adaptation of it that preceded it, and groans under the weight.
“Here I thought you were a woman of science!”
The performances are modest, at best, and generally unaffecting. There’s pathos in this story and we don’t feel it in this version.
As the recent Elisabeth Moss riff on the idea showed us, this gimmick can still terrify. But not in this adaptation, not this time.
Rating: unrated, violence, some nudity
Cast: Mike Beckingham, Mhairi Calvey, Wayne Gordon, Graham Foxe and David Hayman
Credits: Directed by scripted by Paul Dudbridge, scripted by Philip Daay, based on H.G. Wells’ “The Invisible Man.” A 101 Film release.
Running time: 1:40
