Spoilers! Elisabeth Moss discusses that 'absolutely' cathartic 'Invisible Man' ending
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Spoiler alert! The following details the ending of "The Invisible Man," so beware if you haven't seen it yet.
The new horror film might be called âThe Invisible Manâ but it was the woman standing tall in the cathartic ending.
Writer/director Leigh Whannellâs timely update of the classic Universal monster character stars Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass, a San Francisco architect so controlled by her abusive sociopath boyfriend Adrian that she escapes in the night only to find out soon after that he committed suicide.
However, Adrian is also a brilliant optics pioneer as well as the worldâs worst ex: He uses a high-tech suit that allows him to go completely unseen when terrorizing Cecilia and framing her as a murderous, mentally unstable woman, all with the intention of having her in his grasp again. (Also during this time, Cecilia finds out she's pregnant, giving Adrian even more leverage over her waning freedom.)
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But Cecilia fights back, and her invisible predator is shot and killed, revealing Adrianâs brother Tom (Michael Dorman) as the man in the supersuit. Afterward, Adrian turns up alive, which leads to a fateful climactic dinner with Cecilia. Secret cameras around their upscale house see everything but they donât capture Cecilia excusing herself to the bathroom, putting on a second invisible suit sheâs hidden away, and slicing his throat. The movie ends with her leaving the house with the suit and wearing a slight smile of relief that her antagonist is finally gone.
Whannell calls it âa darkly victorious ending,â a not-quite-âhappyâ denouement that gives Cecilia a âreal arc to go from vulnerable and fragile to strongâ but one thatâs also fairly noir-ish.
âYou can imagine if Bruce Willis were to die at the end of âDie Hard.' Everyone would want their money back,â Whannell says. "Horror and thrillers allow experimentation a lot more than in other genres. You can sort of take this really forward-thinking, avant-garde filmmaking and wrap it around a mainstream thriller.â
Moss figures itâs âabsolutelyâ the right emotional coda. âI don't think you can put a character through all of that and then not have them have some redemption in the end, even if it's complicated. Even if it's a choice that she made that she thinks is her only choice, you have to give that character a win at the end. You have to bring her back from that place and give her her strength back.
âYou don't want to watch this whole movie and then have her die,â she adds, laughing. âThat'd be terrible!â
One mystery remains at the end, though: Was Adrian really the main man in the suit and the mastermind of everything that happened to Cecilia? Or was Tom â seemingly a puppet of Adrianâs nefarious machinations â the real antagonist (although one could argue Adrian still got what was coming to him)?
Moss believes it was all Adrianâs doing. âThe brother did maybe this or that on the side to kind of help things out, but regardless, (Adrian) orchestrated the entire thing. He had the suit, he designed it. He chose to use it in the way that he did. So his brother is one of the victims.â
Whannell, however, remains cagey. âI wouldn't ever challenge someone's view of a film of mine. It's the audience's job to unpack it and take away their own meaning,â he says. âSo I would never want to answer those questions only because I wouldn't want to dilute your view of the movie by saying, âWell, here's the correct answer.â Truth is, there's no correct answer.â