Isolation and Abuse in The Invisible Man
In our first commissioned essay, Esmeralda Voegele-Downing writes about isolation and abuse in Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man (2020).
Note: This article contains spoilers
The Invisible Man (2020) was released into a world facing a pandemic. Leigh Whannell’s film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ 1897 sci-fi horror of the same name trades speculative fantasy for allegory, as audiences are asked to see beyond the vanishing villain. Questions of how far impunity could take a megalomaniac in the public eye have, in recent years, been answered. Entrenched systems of power and influence have shielded criminals such as Harvey Weinstein for decades, and it turns out that you can boast about sexual assault on record and still be voted into the Oval Office. What Whannell’s film knows we’re not looking at squarely, and never really have been, is the abusive horror of invisibility behind closed doors.
The story follows Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss), the abused partner of Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). She is an architect trying to escape a metaphysical stronghold, and he is a leader in the scientific field of optics, developing an invisibility suit. As Cecilia outruns his violence and its aftershocks, it transpires that Adrian is only half the threat. Conscientiously uneasy viewing, the following cinematic thrills demand accounting for real-world blind spots. While the plot unfolds, Whannell lays bare the staples of an abuser’s toolkit - coercive control, gaslighting, and systemic abetting. By forcing eyes on the truth of abuse, and then to a mirror, this is a story about the most isolated a person can be. The Invisible Man knows its source material simply because it can’t afford not to, and it proves this by setting up abusive isolation as a twofold curse. The film opens with Cecilia slipping from Adrian’s bed to make a painstaking midnight escape, and viewers creep with her past home security cameras, windows for walls, false-alarm dark silhouettes of men, and a restless ocean nearby that rakes in and out like a snore. Her entrapment is not just a matter of geography; echoes of Adrian are inescapable. Stefan Duscio’s (Judy & Punch, 2019, Acute Misfortune, 2018) cinematography presses us to abandon naïveté as Cecilia escapes to her friend James’ house, where she is still a shut-in, hyper-vigilant, living like a prisoner. Simply put, when no singular house is Adrian’s, every house becomes Adrian’s.
For those familiar with the timbre of this particular dog whistle, Cecilia’s internal struggle is as unbearable as her environmental one, long before the invisible man strikes. Though she finds shelter with loved ones, the film makes no bones about domestic abuse being utterly seclusive, which Cecilia skewers herself, saying “He tries to isolate me. He tries to get me alone.” This serves as a reminder, rhythmically impressed upon viewers, perhaps to give some thought to a friend whose withdrawal coincided with a relationship. When singled out by a predator, isolation transcends any four walls. Sociologist and domestic violence expert Dr. Evan Stark explains in his book, Coercive Control, that victims are encroached upon often as far as their own minds, as “Controllers isolate their partners… Isolation undermines the moorings of social authority and identity, eviscerating a woman's selfhood and constraining her subjectivity.” Through Cecilia, we learn Adrian’s remit extended to “what he assumed [she] was thinking,” and descriptions of abuse pair with voyeuristic camera work that lingers furtively on her from cracked doorways and empty rooms. There is nowhere that Adrian didn’t demand access to, an idea that crystallises when we learn that he wanted a baby. As a victim of abuse, she is left with her body and her word, and forced to fight even for those. By the time the invisible man appears after Adrian’s reported suicide, Cecilia is warned against her own perception; told that memories “haunt” her. True, the invisible man may resemble a ghost, if you believe in them. This parallel, drawn by her well-meaning friend James, is a near miss that crucially raises the stakes. From here, Cecilia’s problem is classed as a matter of opinion.
According to Google Trends, the number of searches for “what is gaslighting behaviour” has recently increased by 400%. A brief history of the term would nod to the 20th century play and film adaptation of Gas Light, a story by Patrick Hamilton in which a man attempts to convince his wife that she is going insane. This psychological abuse tricks a person (or country) into doubting their sanity through the erasure of truth, and a broader history of the behaviour might reference the work of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot in the Victorian field of Hysteria, a female-only illness supposing uterine distress as cause for insanity and institutionalisation. It’s no coincidence that today’s #MeToo movement is dismissed by detractors as “mass hysteria”, or that presidents can discredit critics with references to “blood coming out of her wherever.” It also doesn’t feel like a coincidence when, despite instantly catching on to the invisible man’s game, Cecilia’s journey involves being institutionalised. Figures of authority are predominantly male, and nearly everyone is unwilling to believe the improbable. Adrian’s brother, Tom, in charge of the family estate, is a master of gaslighting. One minute he insists that Cecilia is insane for thinking his brother is alive, and the next he slips her Adrian’s disgusting ultimatums. He-said-she-said rhetoric comprises this house of horrors. This is a slasher in which the final girl is punished for every measure she takes to survive. Art imitates life.
When at last the man in the invisibility suit is shot, the body is revealed as Tom, doing Adrian’s bidding. How long it was him, how torment was divided between the Griffin brothers, and how many others have assumed the role is left poignantly unanswered. Multiplying H.G. Wells’ villain evokes the victim’s worst nightmare. For Cecilia, when no singular man is the invisible man, any man could be the invisible man; Cecilia’s flirtatious interviewer, the jogger outside James’ house, the wardens who make no effort to understand her. Even concepts, such as omniscience, constitute an aggressor. With touches of Bentham and Foucault’s Panopticon theory, the disservice done to womxn by the unblinking gaze of a camera is rife thanks to upskirting, revenge porn, and webcam spying (nodded to by Cecilia herself, painting hers over with nail polish.) Even before the invisible man arrives there is the nagging feeling that there may just be some social misallocation of the modern luxury of privacy, and it might have something to do with denying it to the disadvantaged and poor while corporately sponsoring it for the rich and privileged. Think tax havens. Think gag orders. When Cecilia attempts to cover her stalker in flour, paint, and blood, she becomes every person who has run the gauntlet of documenting assault. She needs perfect timing, sheer dumb luck, and the right people to turn their heads to make her upward blows stick. Even as she gets her revenge and freedom in one fell swoop, the inextricable space between visible/invisible, private/public, connectedness/isolation has never been smaller or more complex. All these facets play tricks of the (gas)light through each other.
The Invisible Man is not content with passing scares, but I have the sense that most won’t leave with a fear of billionaires in super suits. I hope, for the sake of the one in four womxn who will experience abuse in their lifetimes, all of whom we are connected to, whether we realise it or not, that the uninitiated viewer now knows better. Having crash-landed in 2020’s Twilight Zone, this film offers a desperately-needed reminder of sanity to the disproportionately female victims of intimate partner violence. As The Invisible Man makes clear, Griffin was undetectable long before he donned the suit – and anyone can don that suit. Right now, there are an unprecedented number of people like Cecilia trapped in government-mandated lockdown with their abuser and, as of April, ITV reported that domestic abuse killings in the UK had doubled. There is no swift solution, and the film knows that. Midnight escapes are significantly harder to pull off, even though many hotels have opened rooms to those who manage to flee, and shelters are still open, though government funding has only recently been agreed upon. They welcome donations. The horror of abuse predates and will outlast lockdown, and forwards strides are glacial. Still, taking the opportunity to champion narratives such as this is never a wasted effort. The Invisible Man asks us to look a little harder, for our vision to improve. At every chance, we should kick paint onto the invisible man.
Esmeralda Voegele-Downing is a writer and illustrator who splits her time between a publishing house in the city and an independent bookshop by the sea. Devoted to a lifelong study of horror and delight, her work explores the bizarre, the profane, the occult, the feminine, and the terrible — all of which she loves. She has written for Suspira Magazine, Sabat Magazine, and recently the script for a short film, I’m Still I; which is a love letter to defiance. Currently working on a collection of stories, you can find her on Instagram @vilechild.
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