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189 out of 293 people found the following review useful: Beautiful and Brilliant., 28 April 2007 Author: indiefilmguyconnor from United States
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!
127 out of 218 people found the following review useful: Really Great, 3 May 2007 Author: Juicygirl789 from United States
Despite all the bad reviews on here, I went to see "The Invisible" and I was not disappointed. I really loved the underlying drama and self discovery the movie relayed throughout the story. It made you feel for both the victim and the villain and feel their pain and sacrifices. It went past the usual story line of romance and macho heros, but looked deeper. And above that, my friends and I loved the main character :) He is very good looking. Apparently the other reviewers don't have the ability to see past explosions and fake fights in films to see the depth portrayed in this movie. Definitely give this one a try. It made my day and made me think very hard about life. Not to sound too cheesy...
148 out of 265 people found the following review useful: nice, 25 December 2006 Author: reenis from Sweden
This is a remake of the Swedish movie 'Den Onsynlige' and there is no doubt that its worth your time. One of the best movies I have ever witnessed. There is little to no fear elements in the movie, but it's such a beautiful story about a ghost that it can't be ignored.If you think you can figure this movie out by the synopsis above, think again- 'The Invisible' is a epic story about life, death and the choices you make during your time on this Earth. For such a bright film, it's quite Gothic in a sense of the irony the story evokes. In the end, what really matters is making your life worth something and taking control of it on your own- the lesson is a great one, and hopefully this movie will entertain along with inspire. Check it out if you can.
70 out of 121 people found the following review useful: "I See Dead People … Myself!!", 15 April 2007 Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This Americanized re-telling of the Swedish chiller-hit "Den Osynlige" certainly isn't a bad film, but it sadly is just a tad bit too sentimental and unmemorable. The film describes itself perfectly as "Ghost" meets "The O.C." The plot deals with supernatural themes and sincere human emotions, while the characters (and especially the soundtrack) seem to come straight out of a pretentious high-school TV series. The protagonists are all beautiful and spoilt teenagers, so it's pretty difficult to believe they're dealing with life-altering issues like murder, poetry and spiritual redemption. But nonetheless "The Invisible" remains an occasionally very engaging and fast-paced thriller, admirably translated to the screen by genre-expert David S. Goyer. Nick Powell is a popular high-school student who lives alone with his overly protective mother ever since his father passed away. When the local troubled girl Annie and her gang of youthful thugs wrongfully assume Nick told the cops about Annie's involvement in a jewelry theft, they beat him up badly and leave him for for dead in the woods. Slowly approaching the light at the end of the tunnel, Nick returns as an invisible spirit and painfully witnesses how the police investigation regarding his disappearance evolves extremely slow and frustratingly. His last and only chance is to somehow get into contact with Annie and convince her to correct her mistake with a good deed. David S. Goyer attempts – fairly successfully, I may add – to add as few fancy special effects and false scares as possible and puts the emphasis on the characters and the atmosphere. The characters of Nick and Annie clearly gain maturity throughout the story and by the end of the film, they evolved from annoying teenage brats to ... LESS annoying teenage brats. The handful of sub plots, especially the one focusing on Nick and his mother, are rather redundant and only make the wholesome even more irksome. The performances are pretty good, though. Justin Chatwin ("Taking Lives") and Margarita Levieva are terrific and actually manage to make their implausible characters convincing and at least a bit likable near the end. The obtrusive moral of the story as well as the overly melodramatic twists when reaching the film's finale are a bit difficult to cope with – especially if you're primarily a fan of horror and thrillers – but I bet other types of audiences will have tears when walking out of the theater. "The Invisible" has the same producers as "The Sixth Sense" and definitely also shares ideas and plot-aspects with that occult thriller hit. The little kid in the former saw dead people who didn't really realize they crossed the line to the other side, whereas Nick damn well realizes he's dead but there's nobody who sees him. Decent film, at least worth one viewing.
19 out of 21 people found the following review useful: All around mediocre, 28 February 2008 Author: rlange-3 from United States
The underlying plot is perhaps do-able if it were presented with good acting, and believable screenplay, but this one nose dives from the start and flies lazy boring circles all the way to the pathetic impact with the ground at the end. The characters are neither believable, nor well acted. There are a few designated villains, whose only role is to be villains. An uncaring mother who actually cares. Whoa, exciting stuff eh? A bad girl who is really OK, it's just that she has a tough family life. Even for bored suburban kids this is just pathetic. It's not just plot holes, but the characters themselves who are unbelievable.One of the main characters is a boy who only seems to know how to cringe and whimper. He's supposed to be the protagonists best friend, but what really pulls or holds them together? Nothing that meets the eye in the film. He gets a little cut on his hand and falls apart. The protagonist pays his bills for him like a wimp. His Mom finds out he is flying to London and he immediately abandons his carefully laid plans without a squeak. He even throws/gives his ticket away. What a maroon.What really cooked it for me is when he is standing there while Annie takes a shower. He isn't even looking at her. OK, fine, no problem with the idea that the audience doesn't get to see anything, but what 18 year old straight (the film seems to indicate this) male is going to stand next to a good looking young woman and not even sneak a glance. Unrealistic? Floridly unrealistic. He doesn't even appear interested.Or how about when Annie pulls a gun on the cops and manages an impossible escape, then breaks into the school with the flick of a knife (no alarms?), and sleeps on a mat in the gymnasium. In fact, she seems to have the run of the whole set with impunity. And speaking of running and getting around with ease, how do you do that after a major gunshot wound to the abdomen? We get a sappy sound track, a sappy background story about the girl and her little brother, and a long, drawn out, uninspiring, uninteresting plot with unbelievable characters and plot holes galore. What's not to like about that? I gave it a 3.
27 out of 37 people found the following review useful: Intriguing Premise Completely Wasted, 19 April 2008 Author: donjeffries from United States
While the idea of having someone linger between life and death, invisible to the world at large, is intriguing, it gets lost in a confusing morass of a script here. "The Invisible" features one of those stereotypical small female "tough guys" who are somehow capable of not only ordering larger males around to do their bidding, but also to physically intimidate and beat them up. Wow- we've never seen anything like that before from Hollywood! Annie, the tough high school girl who always wears a stocking cap on her pretty little head, is evidently the leader of a ridiculous "gang," which consists of three other males. Two of them are fellow students, who somehow obey her orders (why?) The other is an adult, her boyfriend, who is on probation and obviously has a criminal past. Annie is mad- you know, the teen angst we've seen from Hollywood ever since "Rebel Without A Cause." The only rationale behind her anger, and subsequent life of crime, is that her mother died. Her father is shown only as a laborer who works nights; he doesn't seem to be a bad guy, but Annie tells him at one point that she plans to come back and kill him. Huh? Motive? Yes, her stepmother seems irresponsible, and doesn't appear to be parenting Annie's younger brother properly, but really there is nothing in her home life to justify her perpetual, Brando-like sneer, or the crimes she commits.There are so many absurd scenes in this film. How about the cops who question Annie, after they've found stolen jewelry in her locker? Annie treats the cops with disdain, as she does everyone, and is totally fearless under their questioning. This questioning is almost nonexistent, and after a few softballs, she simply walks out. Huh? Why wasn't she charged with anything? If she was, how did she get out? Did her incredibly poor family place bail somehow? Then there is the male cop questioning Annie's adult boyfriend. This cop doesn't even touch on the issue of statutory rape. He doesn't realize that this boyfriend, who is obviously an adult (probably at least 25), is engaged in an illegal relationship with this underage high school girl? Nope- nothing said about that, just more typical Hollywood cop mumbo-jumbo. Later, Annie will overpower this much larger, criminal adult boyfriend, while he is armed, and then make a few amazing, superhero type jumps as a slew of police officers simply watch her passively, refusing to chase her at all. One of the most ridiculous scenes I've ever seen in any film.Of all the odious messages "The Invisible" sends the audience, the most twisted is the tired old bad girl is actually good at heart nonsense. This used to be a staple of film scripts, but almost always with the bad character being the bad boy, who somehow attracts the sweet heroine away from the boring boy next door. No telling how many girls absorbed that disastrous message and left a nice guy for some future alcoholic- wife beater, because Hollywood basically told them it was the "cool" thing to do. Anyhow, Annie is shown to be actually a good kid at heart, even if she is behind the attempted murder of the main character, who inexplicably ends up loving her anyway. She also kills her boyfriend, tries to kill the main characters best friend, and commits several other crimes. But, she does have a soft spot for her kid brother, so how could we not fall in love with her? Finally, the movie climaxes with a totally unexplained and absurd gimmick whereby Annie is the only one who can bring the hero Nick back to life. This is done by her talking to him as he lays unconscious in a hospital bed, and then laying down next to him and bleeding all over him (she had been shot earlier by her boyfriend, but seeing as how she is so tough and all, Annie is able to walk around for hours, and even evade the police during a tired, hackneyed car chase scene, with a gunshot wound to her abdomen). Yes, this makes perfect sense. Of course, how else could the hero be saved? Overall, this is an unoriginal, horrible film.
18 out of 22 people found the following review useful: Stunningly Bad, 27 April 2008 Author: jimmygeekrock from United States
I'm used to viewer ratings being inflated on IMDb. So used to it, that I tend to take them with a grain of salt. And THE INVISIBLE should be regarded as the poster child for inflation.I write this review not to reinforce the lower tier ones this movie has received, but to warn unsuspecting viewers. Stay away. Stay far away. This is a movie that is inept on so many levels that I was literally stunned.Let's start with the script, which has already been dissected here in detail. These kids were such cardboard figures that their dialog was laugh inducing. Every sequence featured some ridiculously over the top line, as if the viewers needed to be pummeled into "believing" in these stereotypes. My favorite moment? The poetry reading that is supposed to demonstrate how the main character's gentle soul is somehow transcendent. He's nervous to read it in front of his high school class, but the teacher insists (hoping to wipe away the memory of a peer's previous adolescent work). Relucatantly, he begins to read. The music swells. We know the kids are digging it, because they stop talking and lean forward. The music swells some more as classmate after classmate are won over by his genius. It's a pivotal moment in the film, as it demonstrates for the first time the conflict between Nick and his distant mother - how he wants to go to writing school in London, but is thwarted by a mother who (seemingly) doesn't believe in his talent.What's the problem? Did anyone who gave this movie a good review actually listen to the drivel that came out? Nick's "poetic brilliance" sounded like bad emo band lyrics. And the crime becomes that his poetry is revisited throughout the film, each time becoming more annoying. More laughable. By the time he was reading the lines over his mother's shoulder, everyone in the room with me was in stitches.It's hard to believe that the director penned BATMAN RETURNS. You'd think he's have an ear for realistic dialog. Instead, he seemed intent on proving he could use every camera move known to man to breathe life into this cliché-riddled excuse for a story. Witness the opening shot. It's like Orson Welles dropped by.The lesson? When all else fails - when logic is thrown to the four winds and even a five minute crane shot is not enough - don't despair. Just fill very transition in the film's second half with painful emo music. Have each emotion underlined by brain numbing lyrics the equal of the brain numbing script.Sorry to be so harsh. If this was an independent picture I might have given it a couple stars for the cinematography and acting. But this was a major Hollywood production with major Hollywood money. All we are left with is commercial exploitation: the producers seem to have bet that the preteen audience would be too self absorbed to recognize the clichés and bad execution. Given some of the reviews here, maybe they were right.
19 out of 24 people found the following review useful: This is not the film I saw in the trailers, 23 May 2007 Author: Dan Grant (dan.grant@bell.ca) from Toronto, Ontario
I really shouldn't get this emotionally involved, but I was angry when I saw this film. This is not the film I wanted to see when the trailer broke last October. There it was in big grandiose lettering, "From the producer of Sixth Sense and the co-writer of Batman Returns." How could you not be intrigued with this team? I was lead to believe this was going to be a murder mystery about some guy trying to find out who killed him and how he was running out of time to solve that mystery. In the trailer he encounters some old man in a hospital or something, who explains to our protagonist that if he can solve the mystery of his own death, then he will come back to life. I was excited to see this movie. It was supposed to come out at around Christmas. Then something strange happened. Instead of launching it at the lucrative Christmas season, the inconspicuously and clandestinely delayed the film for four months. Instead they dumped it into theaters one week before Spiderman 3 came out and they edited the hell out of it. No longer did you have a film about a teen trying solve his own murder, you simply had a film about some kid who gets murdered. That's it. Nothing else. From there, while in ghost limbo, he follows around his murderer. Not the two male thugs who helped perpetuate the murder, but the "mysteriously" hot chick who kicks him to death. You see, she has a dark past. She is ignored and possibly abused at home. So naturally she decides the best way to compensate for this is to beat up guys twice her weight and then of course kill them. Because, you know, that's what normal disturbed kids do. They kill people. And this is just the beginning. Because now we have the "good guy" following his own murderer, and get this, once he sees her take off her hat and dance at an "E" club, she becomes illuminated to him. And then he decides that she isn't such a bad girl after all. Of course. This is the girl that KILLED YOU and because she has a nice rack, is nice to her baby brother and has had a few unfortunate bad breaks in life, you fall for her. And then at the end of the movie, it actually wants us to believe that she is the only one that can save him. She must go to his hospital room and sit next to him and then will him back to life. SIGH! The problem with this film is that it suffers from a lack of everything. It doesn't make sense and I think that is the studios fault. Maybe they screened the film for an audience and they didn't like the direction the film was going. So instead of tweaking it, they butchered it. They took the Sixth Sense element out of it and what you have left is a Steven Seagal movie with a ghost. I want to watch the movie I saw in the trailer. Where is that movie? It's out there somewhere. It has to be. They edited it to make is something terrible. How terrible.Here are some other terrible plot points. After the guy is murdered, his best friend, who is also at the scene, doesn't go to the cops. He is too afraid of this 5'2, 98 pound girl. He just lets his best friend rot at the bottom of a sewer or something. I mean, where is the logic in this film. AT one point, it looked like they were going to introduce a twit where his best friend might have been involved. But even that went nowhere. There are literally a half dozen more plot points that were just silly beyond belief. I really struggle to understand how shoddy writing like this is allowed in Hollywood. This film could have been so much more. The idea and concept and original trailer were very well done. The film is not.3/10
17 out of 21 people found the following review useful: horrible emo crap, 5 January 2008 Author: JABBAKAHUT from United States
I don't know that I can find a redeeming thing in this movie. I'm shocked that the guy who gave rebirth to Batman is associated with this crap. It doesn't answer any question it poses and the dialog is only slightly better than something written by George Lucas. The characters don't act the way we expect them to (not in the good twist sort of way, just the horribly inconsistent sort of way). Motivations are vague at best. The big shocker is that the evil girl is a beauty in disguise. It feels like a movie in which the ugly nerd gets a makeover. Like we need to see her shower? Anything that could have been interesting like the exploration of what this limbo state in which he exists in is all about? Including useless characters such as the little brother, the old dieing dude, even the supposed best friend are weak superfluous dry icons. There is nothing thrilling about this movie, nothing is original. Seriously, there isn't a scene that makes sense. Lets take the body which nobody can find and leave it out in the open in hopes that it will just be washed down a river and found later? The cops are portrayed as incompetent at best. Character motivations which are hinted at but never elaborated; such as the stupid drug dealing hottie's father who was a cop and "it's a long story" which isn't explained somehow probably has something to do with the death of her mother? It's possible they just edited this thing to death removing all the exposition which would have helped make sense of this convoluted story. This isn't a failed ambitious attempt, it's a lazy half-ass attempt to be profound. I imagine anybody from the EMO generation loves this movie. By the end every scene is laughable, multiple people are going into this half dead world and communicating with people on life support. I'm glad I downloaded this, I'm sick of paying for crap movies, when will Hollywood get it?
16 out of 20 people found the following review useful: A Schlock-Fest Mess, 17 June 2008 Author: fwomp from United States
If you were a film maker and happened upon a bad premise that ended just as bad as it started, you'd probably want to hide. And thus, I believe, is where THE INVISIBLE received its true title.Based EXTREMELY loosely on the 2002 Swedish thriller DEN OSYNLIGE, The Invisible is so wrought with problems as to be sadly laughable.First let's look at the premise of the film. A nearly murdered boy named Nick (Justin Chatwin, WEEDS) comes back to 'life' ...but doesn't. He's a ghost of himself but doesn't know why, nor does the viewing audience. Perhaps he's being taught some ethereal lesson? Who knows? Second is the hot-tough-chick who 'kills' Nick named Annie (Margarita Levieva). She's battling demons both in her private life and her school, finding trouble wherever it may lay. And when she thinks she's killed Nick, she suddenly grows a conscious. Why she does is, again, unclear. But, oh, there's the fact that this troubled girl who 'killed' this fellow school mate can suddenly hear him, too. Again, we're unsure why this is. One would think that Nick's mom (Marcia Gay Harden, INTO THE WILD) would be the one to hear her own son. After all, she has a genetic connection to him and would probably be the one most likely to hear his near-death pleas. But ...no.Third is the woefully lame ending. Why Nick's mother would allow his would-be killer into his hospital room is beyond ludicrous. And the fact that she laid down and 'poof!' Nick is once again 'alive' is pure schlock to the highest degree.One would think that Director David S. Goyer would come up with something powerful and moving, especially when you consider he did some amazing writing work on films such as DARK CITY, BLADE and BATMAN BEGINS. But ...no. I guess they all can't be winners. I bet Mr. Goyer wishes he were invisible after the release of this mess.
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