The Invisible

Definitely NOT a copycat of "The Sixth Sense" this film instead is highly original, sets its own mark, goes its own way.

Although I haven't been a teen in decades, I know them well enough to say the portrayals of the central characters are as on-the-level as I've seen lately. This never-dull and unusual story kept us involved more than we expected, and I recommend it for anyone who enjoys either teen movies or supernatural thrillers.

If you rent it from Netflix, please beware of a similar titled film, a dreadful movie about two young American stone-heads pretty much comatose in a cheap flat in Paris. Dull and stupid.

The soundtrack of INVISIBLE is truly good and proves that good music is still being done in 2007 even if they don't ever play it on the air.

One way films have improved: When I was a teen there were never any teen movies with characters you could either believe or relate to. Now they make such movies frequently. After all, the most complex problems in a lifetime are during the teen years. Everything after that is easy once you've survived the basic training of that age. Once you know that you've got an over-sized field of ideas for good movies like this.

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.

**** SPOILERS AHEAD ***** Man, this movie was one big cliché after another. This could have been so much better if they would have dropped the "must get a PG-13 rating" mentality and actually made it the way it needed to be made. Regardless, they put it out the way they did and here is my summary...

There once was a rich boy with a head too big for his body and an infatuation for wearing girls jeans and trendy slogan t-shirts. He writes crappy poetry and thinks he is better than everyone else. His mommy wont let him go to a poetry writers school in England, so he pouts around his birthday party and house, and saves up money to go by himself by writing French papers for dumb jocks.

His friend, a nerd, borrows money from the school heavies, which consists of two 120 pound males and a chick with a lock blade knife. They cut the nerds finger and he goes crying to the rich boy with the over-sized head. The rich boy confronts the knife carrying chick, who is 95 pounds, with 75 pounds being her hair tucked into a toboggan, making her appear like a cone head from SNL. The 95 pound chick beats his a$$.

The cone head chick steals cars and expensive jewelry by night, and makes it to school by first bell the next morning. Just like any normal crook would do, she hides the stolen jewelry in her locker. The cone head chix bfriend betrays her, the nerd boy betrays rich boy, and viola, the chick kicks rich boys a$$ again, this time with a karate kick levitating him 10 feet off of th ground. At this point, I started to realized that not only is the rich boy invisible, he is invincible, since he falls ten feet head first onto some rocks after getting k-kicked by the cone head, gets dumped shortly after head first about 15 feet into a storm drain, and then later in the movie gets dumped onto a bunch of rocks (probably head first). Maybe this is why his head is so overly huge for his body.

So, rich boy wanders the earth, invisible to all, except pigeons and the cone head chick. HE can throw stuff, break stuff, etc., but they go right back to normal. But, he can command pigeons to fly, and that is visible to everyone. Dr. Doolittle in chick pants.

After removing her toboggan, and skank dancing in slow-mo, the cone head chick tries to save the rich emo boy, and gets shot in the stomach. We now learn that she is nearly invincible also. With a bleeding profusely stomach wound, she outruns police during a high speed chase, breaks into a hospital, holds a conversation with big head boys mom, and climbs into bed with a hairy chested emo boy, who she tried to kill, and then dies.

There, the cliff notes version for this turd.

THE END

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.

I love this movie because it isn't the same old ghost story you've come to memorize by now. Unlike the cliché disguised as a ghost flick such as The Orphanage, which critics loved, this movie broke rules. It didn't make sense, but that's what made it good. The characters were memorable, unlike the characters in The Orphanage that are so cliché they now have their own genres: Apathetic Dad, Angry Mama Bear Mom, Innocent Child That Can Do No Wrong. The Invisible doesn't use any of these clichés. It makes its own rules and then breaks its own rules. The ghosts don't revert to the same old jump-at-you-AHHH! tactics that we've all seen countless times. They actually try to be more disturbing than that, by being more realistic and not scary.

I simply don't understand the critics. They trash movies like this that actually try to be different and hail hopeless clichés like The Orphanage. I also don't understand people who do the same.

Yes, this movie could be labeled as emo, but you'll see this movie has a lot to say that you're not going to find in what the critics call "deep" movies with "moral".

It's not perfect by any means. I could sit here and name countless technical flaws with the presentation (like the opening scene), but they're lost to the fact that this movie tried to be different. I'm so stunned that something actually tried to be different anything else bad about the movie fell away.

7/10