The Invisible Man

1 CECILIA’S ESCAPE

Chris Hewitt: Now this is how you start in medias res. Not with a bang, but a whisper, the suspense ratcheting up to unbearable levels as Elisabeth Moss’s Cecilia makes her meticulously planned escape, in the middle of the night, from her abusive partner, Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Soundtracked just by the crashing of nearby waves (and the occasional whirring of cameras to suggest the presence of one of Griffin’s fancy-dan invisible suits), this wordless sequence, tight with tension, tells us everything we need to know about Cecilia’s situation. And without even properly introducing us to Griffin, who is asleep the entire time, it renders us terrified of the threat he holds.

Leigh Whannell: I wanted to keep the character of Adrian mysterious. One of my initial thoughts was that to make the Invisible Man scary, I had to make him unknowable — rather than make him a central character, make him a background player. I didn’t want to know much about him. The less you know, the scarier he is.

Somehow, this opening scene is terrifying, despite the Invisible Man being fully visible. This is as tense and uncomfortable as any horror or thriller in recent memory, yet the bad guy spends most of the sequence sleeping