Well said, King.
I love that the movie leaves itself open to so many interpretations. When interviewed on the ending, the star Elizabeth Moss had this to say on her own interpretation:
[Moss] plays Cecilia, the abused wife of the titular invisible man – but if people had asked Moss, “Are you the Invisible Woman?”, well, the answer is a bit more involved.
Over the course of the movie, Cecilia’s sanity is constantly called into question by those around her – who go so far as to have her locked in an institution – and even when she finally confronts her invisible attacker and removes his mask… it’s not Adrian, but his brother. Adrian, we’re told, was being held captive in his own basement the whole time and controlled by said sibling.
Cecila refuses to believe this, though, and, wearing a wire, goes to Adrian’s house with the intention of convincing him to admit what he’s done. When he won’t confess outright, she leaves the room, puts on the second invisible suit she’d stowed away earlier in the film and returns unseen to slit Adrian’s throat. Cecilia exits with the suit and closure that it had, in fact, all been of his doing.
But if viewers don’t listen carefully – to Adrian’s purposeful use of the word “surprise” – you may leave the theater wondering whether Adrian really was innocent or if Cecilia was, once again, being gaslit.
“Well, what did you think?” Moss countered inquisitively when asked how she interpreted the ending. Naturally, we believe Cecilia. “And that was important to us to map out really carefully. There’s a small period when she thinks, ‘Am I crazy? I could be wrong about this.’ Then we very carefully put things in place so you are with her, so you believe her through the story, so you’re on her side, so you know that she’s right.”
“For me, I wanted it to be something cathartic, something where the audience could walk away feeling like there was some sense of catharsis and victory,” director Leigh Whannell weighed in. Jackson-Cohen, meanwhile, is glad to play into the ambiguity. “It is about gaslighting and so we wanted to do it as honestly as possible and this is how people like that operate… That’s what is ultimately so terrifying about Adrian, there is not a single part of him that can be trusted.”
Have you seen the director’s other movies, eg Saw, Insidious, Upgrade.
And of course I’m so hyped for his next two movies:
- a similar contemporary reimagining of The Wolfman based on an original pitch from Ryan Gosling in the veign of Jake Gyllenhall’s Nightcrawler (that is subject to change…)
Ryan Gosling’s new project is said to be about an anchorman who ends up becoming the famed werewolf and creates havoc, only to return to his day job to report on the happenings.
- A SEQUEL TO THE INVISIBLE MAN YASSSSSSSSSS
