Fear the Invisible Man

Needless to say that I had actually never heard about this 2023 thriller titled "Fear the Invisible Man" prior to sitting down to watch it. And I had no idea what I was in for here, so I have to admit that I wasn't really harboring much of any expectations. Which, in turn, meant that director Paul Dudbridge had every opportunity to impress and entertain me.

However, the storyline in "Fear the Invisible Man", as written by Philip Daay, Helena Gergelova and Monika Gergelova was sort of mundane, bland and rather uneventful. And for a thriller, that doesn't exactly spell top notch entertainment. The movie was sort of lacking a drive, and it felt like director Paul Dudbridge was just filming the thing whilst still in neutral gear.

Yet, I still managed to sit through all 100 minutes that the movie ran for, though I have to say that I was not really particularly entertained by what transpired on the screen.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble, except for actor David Hayman (playing Wicksteed), and he was barely in the movie at all. The acting performances in the movie were actually fair enough, despite the fact that the actors and actresses had surprisingly little to work with in terms of script, dialogue and characters.

Visually, however, then I will say that the CGI effects in the movie were actually surprising good for a movie of this type. And while the movie didn't make a lot of use of special effects, whatever effects were there were actually helping to make the movie a bit more interesting.

"Fear the Invisible Man" is not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time, as there was hardly sufficient contents to support this first viewing. Nor is it a movie that I will recommend to fans of the thriller genre.

My rating of "Fear the Invisible Man" lands on a three out of ten stars.

Boring boring boring!!! Struggled my way through this! As a massive fan of hollow man with kevin bacon I was really looking forward to this movie looking at some of the other reviews which were hit and miss...however this is Invisible man on a budget, the production and the direction is awful, when the 'Invisible man ' is in the same shot as other characters, it sounds like he's in a completely different room...like a sound booth! The special effects are at most average, The movie is well over acted....some of the character's accents sound extremely forced. Extremely poor throughout. Would give this a wide birth.

Wow!, was this a borefest.

The movie's top focus is the Victorian era, trying its best to act as it belongs there, with the buildings, wardrobe, accents, even the weather.

The main issue, The Invisible Man is genuinely a side kick, that reappears every now and then as the lead character takes charge.

It is a bold move to call this Fear the Invisible Man, as for one, of course we can't see him and two, we don't really get to see him, hear him, follow his character arc. This is one of those movies that put an ex famous actor on the cover that makes a cameo and then leaves. Same thing here, the movie uses a good bait and waits to see what it got hooked.

And the difference between this and an Asylum production, is quite small really. But more than anything, I kid you not, it is truly, truly, boring. Almost nothing happens, because as I said before, the movie's focus is it's surroundings, not characters but dialogue, not people but old clothes, no story but something to fill up close to 2 hours.

Not recommended. Definitely and well I guess, literally, nothing to see here.

Cheers!

The movie throughout is pretty slow. But that is ok with me, I actually quite enjoyed a lot of the costumes, sets, and props around the movie. The acting for the most part was also very good. It must be difficult to act when in a empty room and talking to someone who isn't there but they pulled it off mostly. Also sometimes the voices were too low to hear over the audio, but most of the time they were alright.

I'm a very big fan of the original H. G. Wells book and I have always loved the original 1933 Invisible Man movie, and I will say after watching this, the 1933 movie is still my favorite and it's also the closest to the original source material of the book. It seems this movie tried to go with the book, but then immediately dropped it 5 minutes in. Which is okay.

I think I preferred this movie over the 2020 movie though. Overall I think a movie like this can work, and for the most part it almost does. What kills it, is that Kemp, the protagonist doesn't seem to have a reason to keep being around Griffin.

Speaking of Griffin, I do not care for the voice of him. The most important feature of the Invisible Man is the voice, Claude Rains is no longer with us, and to me he IS The Invisible Man. The voice in this movie just sounds off, and it sounds modified to be deeper than it really needs to be. Not sure if it is modified or if he just sounds like that.

Last thing is the CGI was pretty bad, I know this is a low budget film, but if you have bad CGI you should use less of it. The really noticeable parts were the 3rd time the same horse and carriage appeared, the rain, the fire, the snow/soup on The Invisible Man, and when Griffin becomes invisible/visible.

Also the ending is sequel bait...

After the fantastic opening scene this quickly descends into total boredom. The first issue I noticed was that the dialogue quality was pretty terrible, especially for the invisible man which sounded like it was recorded in the bathroom and not at the location. The voice acting was good though. In fact overall I had no problem with the acting overall. The effects are 10% incredible, 50% adequate and 40% a bit of a mess. There are some minor plot holes and nonsensical character motivations like almost everything the detective does. The production quality is mostly very good, the locations and costumes are really excellent and the cinematography is faultless, if a little uninspired. Technically the only issue is the awful dialogue quality and some of the ADR is probably the worst I have ever heard in anything ever. The real issues that make this film so bad is that it lacks atmosphere and it's really boring. After the start nothing happens. Even the ending is a non-event. I'll end by comparing this to some other films: For similar story but with good pacing and characters watch Hollow Man (2000), for great practical effects and relatability watch The Entity (1982), for great atmosphere and mystery watch The Others (2001) and for a character driven story watch The Invisible Man (2020).