Invisible

Nick Powell (Justin Chatwin) is a graduating senior with lofty ambitions of defying his over-bearing mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and flying to London for a writer's workshop. The day before leaving, Nick tries unsuccessfully to help out his friend Pete (Chris Marguette) who has failed to make a repayment to the school's femme fatale delinquent, Annie Newton (Margarita Levieva) who has troubles of her own. A crappy home-life ever since her mother died, Annie has to look out for her little brother while dealing with her lazy step-mother. On top of that, Annie carries out carjackings and reckless jewelery heists with her boyfriend on parole, Marcus (Alex O'Loughlin). When Annie gets busted for a robbery she assumes Pete and Nick were behind a phone call to the police, proceeding to terrorize Pete and sick her side-kicks onto Nick. During the beat-up however, Annie loses her cool and apparently kills Nick. Panicked, Annie orders her two male accomplices and Pete to hide Nick's body in the forest and lie low while the police conduct a search for him. But here's the 'twist' – Nick isn't dead. His spirit, soul or whatever is wandering around, the world is oblivious to him. After an encounter with a revived bird, Nick realizes he isn't dead, but rather in limbo. In the forest, he is still alive, and now his wandering soul has to try and save his physical body from dying.... to do this he 'haunts' Annie, waiting for guilt to sink in and for his murderer to turn herself in.

Loosely based on a novel by Swedish author Mats Wahl – the plot itself has been done before (and better) in the 1990 hit film 'Ghost'. That being said, the film has some small admirable qualities. Kudos has to go to director David Goyer for trying a different technique with the living dead thing. Instead of Nick being unable to touch objects, or having people walk straight through him, Goyer incorporated some impressive camera tricks so that every time Nick touches something, it does move but in a split second replaces itself as though undisturbed. Greatly illustrated in a scene at school when Nick throws a book into a shelf, only to look down and see the book still resting on the table and the shelf intact.

Otherwise the film is pretty mediocre. The soundtrack is well suited to any Grey's Anatomy episode, which is not a good thing. Snow Patrol, Death Cab for Cutie – it's all very 'now' and melancholy. Justin Chatwin, who had a role in the film 'War of the Worlds' and a one-off in TV show 'Lost' is a fairly magnetic leading man. It would help if the character of Nick had some endearing qualities – but unfortunately the side story about his father dying when he was young just isn't enough to make you warm to the pretentious sad-sap. A real problem is the character of Annie. Perhaps a lot of back-story about her home life was cut out, because what is offered about her is not enough to justify her criminal behavior; and it is clear that this is a story of redemption, the audience is waiting with Nick for Annie to grow a conscience and while we wait scenes are offered to make us warm to her... but it just does not work. As Nick says to the un-hearing Annie "Your mom dies and your dad marries somebody else, and that makes it okay?". It doesn't and we cant believe that it does. Furthermore, Margarita Levieva is just too 'pretty' to play such a bad-ass no-hoper. She whips off her black beanie to reveal wicked ringlet hair and all believability of this girl as a murdering thief just go right out the window.

And on a side-note: I don't understand why there was an instant police search for Nick who had not been missing for the required 48 hours? His mother presses the police to begin a full-scale search because Nick usually phones her if he will be out late – but he bought a plane ticket to London, and although she checks and discovers he did not use it, isn't that evidence that he was ready to pack up and leave home?

Another qualm I have is with the editing. Too quick and choppy (especially in the beginning, explaining Nick and Annie's stories), there is no fluency between scenes and I felt somewhat disorientated trying to work out where the scene had suddenly jumped to and which story I was now following.

'The Invisible' starts out mediocre and ends cornily. Hire it on DVD only if there is absolutely nothing else of interest, but be prepared for something pretty uneventful and forgettable.

The invisible is one of those movies that you walk into expecting something totally different, and the movie doesn't fail. Loosely following the theme of The Sixth Sense, the Invisible is less darker and delves into deep character study of the protagonist and the antagonist all the while providing enough twists to the plot that one hangs onto his seat anticipating the next twist. Those who couldn't appreciate this beautiful movie are either too realistic or action/horror obsessed. Justin Chatwin as Nick Powell is just awesome, portraying the frustration and desperation with finesse, extracting sympathy for the 'perfect' teenager. Margarita Levieva as Annie Newton is also fantastic as her character undergoes transformation and redemption through the course of the movie. The Invisible dares to chose a different path from the typical and comes out with flying colors. If you liked Sixth Sense, you are going to love this one.

The Invisible was actually something of a surprise to me. I saw the previews in theatres and thought "right, thriller, wait for DVD." so I did. And I had been told several times that it wasn't that great either.

In spite of this I rented it. I wasn't expecting much, but overall, it did pretty well. The concept was pretty interesting, the acting was actually very good.

It did have its moments of following a sort of CSI-type blueprint, and other pretty archetypical concepts of a thriller movie. It wasn't anything outstandingly original.

My biggest problem with it was the lack of subplot development. The whole relationship between him and his girlfriend was completely underdone and towards the end just faded away... It seemed too often that The Invisible was trying to string too many subplots together and ultimately just ended up grazing over most of them which is a disappointment.

But overall, it was a pretty well done move. Good Acting, good script, pretty good soundtrack as well.

And someone said something about the soundtrack being "indie"? I'm sorry, but most of those songs have experience pretty heavy radio play, and there isn't anything pretentious about putting popular music into a movie, that's a good thing.

I walked into this movie expecting something completely different than what I got. While most people are using this as an excuse to hate this movie, It made me like it even more. The acting was excellent. Justin Chatwin and Margarita Levieva are incredibly believable and both seem to really enjoy the material. I can understand why some people would be mad. Most people were expecting the teenage horror flick. I am so glad it wasn't. There was so much depth and beauty to it. In my opinion if you didn't' like it either you didn't understand it or you are a horror obsessed teen. The soundtrack also was amazing. I loved everything about this movie. The promotion(meaning Trailers) could have been done a lot more differently and better. Still i strongly encourage this movie to those of you who love deep, thought provoking, beautiful, and emotional movies!

I am one of the lucky ones who watched the movie first before watching the trailer. So I don't have the same expectations as others who have watched the trailer beforehand did.

I was pleasantly surprised to watch the movie, and I think the movie was nicely done. Honestly, it was hard to crammed a 300+ pages of book into an hour and a half movie, so I was quite happy that the director was able to make the best out of it.

Justin Chatwin, who plays Nick Powell did a great job in his acting. He can convey his feelings to the audiences, and we can't stop feeling sympathy towards him. I believe he got a bright future in front of him.

I like the way that Nick's ghost is made out to be. Instead of Bruce Willis' Sixth Sense, Nick can touch objects. In one scene, he threw a book to a bookshelves, but it returned back to normal in an instance. It gave an impression that Nick thought that what he did was happening when actually nothing had happened.

However, I think the movie could be made better. The storyline was choppy at times, which seemed that the writer was unable to connect the many storyline in the movie. There were a few scenes which were absolutely unnecessary and only served to further confused the audiences.

So a score of 5/10 for this movie.