"The Invisible Man" and "The Platform"

Let's check in on some recent horror movies.

The newest version of "The Invisible Man" is a low budget Blumhouse thriller written and directed by Leigh Whannell. It takes the novel approach of being reframed as a domestic violence story, told through the eyes of its heroine, Cecilia Kass (Elizabeth Moss). In the opening sequence, we watch Cecilia escape from the fortress-like house of her controlling boyfriend Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). She slowly recovers from the ordeal with the support of her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer), and hides out in the home of Emily's ex-husband, James (Aldis Hodge), where he lives with his teenage daughter Sydney (Storm Reid). Adrian is reported to have killed himself, but Cecilia has her doubts, especially when she starts experiencing unexplained accidents and disruptions in her life.

"The Invisible Man" slots in nicely with the recent trend of horror films that are social allegories. Here, we have a domestic abuse story with a uniquely empowered abuser, constantly undercutting and isolating his victim, and making her feel like she's going crazy. And it works wonderfully, because even though the mechanisms that create the monster are pure fantasy, the underlying abuser/victim dynamics and psychological mind games being deployed ring absolutely true to life. Adrian is the psycho stalker ex of every woman's nightmares, who seems unstoppable. The film is a great showcase for Elizabeth Moss, playing a traumatized woman on the edge who learns what she's capable of to ensure her own survival. She's able to make the most ludicrous situations feel emotionally real and immediate.

And that's important because "The Invisible Man" is built around old fashioned thrills and suspense instead of expensive CGI visuals. Whannell does a great job of using the camera to suggest where his invisible man is, letting the camera drift to suspicious empty parts of the frame, or have shots linger after the primary actors have departed, as if to catch the reaction shot of someone who should be standing there. The action scenes and the traditional "Invisible Man" effects sequences are handled well, but kept fairly brief. This is for the best, because floating guns and knives always end up looking awfully silly the longer they're onscreen, and Elizabeth Moss is more than capable of generating plenty of terror and paranoia by herself. I don't think this is the best version of "The Invisible Man," but it's a good one, and a very fitting one for 2020.

Now, on to the Spanish language film, "The Platform," recently released by Netflix. This is a much more brutal and much more blunt cinematic allegory, representing the whole of human society with a very tall tower called "The Hole." Each numbered level holds two people, and food is delivered once a day via a large platform that is lowered through the shaft that runs the length of the building from the top to the bottom. However, because the people on the top levels gorge themselves, the people on the lower levels go without - and no one knows how many levels there are. Our protagonist, a man named Goreng (Iván Massagué), wakes up on level 48, and is thrust into this brutal system of horrific inequality with only a copy of "Don Quixote" to aid in his survival. Other characters include Goreng's roommate Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor), an idealist named Imoguiri (Antonia San Juan), an escape-fixated man named Baharat (Emilio Buale Coka), and a violent woman named Miharu (Alexandra Masangkay) who is searching for a lost child.

Though "The Platform" shares similar themes with movies like "Snowpiercer" and "High Rise," its closest cinematic relative is Vicenzo Natali's "Cube." From the industrial, bare bones sets, to the grotesque savagery of the Hole's inhabitants, to the implacable mechanical precision of the Hole's operation, "The Platform" portrays an inescapable capitalist nightmare system full of death and madness. It's also a wonderfully disgusting film - lots of gore, splatter, and people messily consuming massive amounts of food. The characters are better defined than the characters in "Cube," however, with each person representing different moral philosophies or attitudes toward the social order instead of just different social groups. I like that the film actively tries to grapple with big ideas, and finds room for moments of grisly black humor. The standout performance is that of Eguileor as Trimagasi, who cheerfully rationalizes grim atrocities.

The metaphor of the Hole ends up being much more interesting than the story that takes place in it, and the ending is one of those contrived, ambiguous resolutions that feel a bit like the filmmakers ran out of time or money. I like the earlier parts of the film, where Goreng is gradually learning about his circumstances and figuring out how the system works, considerably more than the action-oriented back half where he tries to overthrow it. However, the film is consistently clever, does an impressive amount with limited resources, and leaves plenty for viewers to chew over.
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