'The Invisible Man' cast members Elisabeth Moss, Storm Reid, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and writer/director Leigh Whannell discuss the upcoming film in this interview with CinemaBlend's Eric Eisenberg. Find out behind-the-scenes details on filming stunts and more.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00It just doesn't make any sense.
00:02What?
00:03Adrian wouldn't kill himself.
00:06Listen, you're getting your freedom back, okay?
00:09Don't let him haunt you.
00:11Hello?
00:21Considering your arc, Cecilia's arc from the beginning of this film,
00:24you start at like a tension stress level of nine.
00:27I know.
00:28One or two scenes where you're kind of relaxed.
00:30I know.
00:31But it just makes me wonder, by the end of this production,
00:33what state were you in?
00:35I was tired.
00:36Yeah?
00:37But I was sad that it was done because I had such a good time making it
00:40and I wanted to go back and start at the beginning and do it all over again, honestly.
00:44Would you say that the emotional stuff was as taxing as the physical stuff?
00:47Because you have it in pretty equal balance in this one.
00:49Yeah, for sure.
00:50I'm more used to the emotional stuff,
00:52but emotional while doing physical stuff is different.
00:55So for me, that was definitely a big challenge.
00:57And having to really take care of myself in a different way physically
01:01and kind of warm up before I did a scene.
01:04I don't usually warm up on The Handmaid's Tale, you know?
01:07Are you okay?
01:08Someone's sitting in that chair.
01:13When I was reading the script in my kitchen,
01:15I realized that, one, this was going to be a very scary movie,
01:18but two, it did have those powerful messages in it.
01:22It was purposeful and impactful,
01:24and I try to choose my projects very strategically,
01:27and I know that I don't want to be a part of anything
01:30that isn't trying to have a bigger conversation.
01:33I think it was a real no-brainer.
01:35The first time I read the script,
01:36I also think Lee is such a clever and exciting writer-director.
01:42And so I remember watching Upgrade when it came out
01:45and just being like, who is this guy?
01:47This guy's incredible.
01:48And then when this sort of came across my desk,
01:51I was like, oh yeah, this guy.
01:53I just think if you're going to take property like this
01:56that is so kind of well-known,
02:00this is the way to do it.
02:02You ground your story.
02:04I mean, you base it in reality.
02:07You ground it.
02:08This movie is also incredibly cool just coming after Upgrade.
02:10Obviously, in Upgrade, it's a person who's not in control of their own body.
02:13Right, yeah, totally.
02:14You're fighting against an invisible force.
02:16Did you find kind of similarities between those projects?
02:18Yeah, it's funny because when I took the job to do this,
02:20I wasn't thinking of that stuff.
02:22I was just thinking, oh, this is a cool character
02:24and there's an opportunity here to modernize it
02:26and make it this suffocating, tense thriller.
02:29It was during the writing and the pre-production
02:32that I started to see all the parallels.
02:34It's funny, even the little things like
02:36I seem to have an obsession with houses on the water.
02:39If you remember from Upgrade, the guy had the house on the coast.
02:42And that is not by design.
02:44I think that there's something in my subconscious that gets through
02:47and I'm drawing all these parallels.
02:49You're talking about tech being used to suppress and torture somebody.
02:57So I think there's a real paranoia about tech that lives inside me
03:01that just keeps coming out in these screenplays.
03:03But it's very subconscious.
03:06Wasn't there kind of an extra challenge too?
03:08Because he loves long shots.
03:10He loves just keeping that camera rolling.
03:11So do I. I love that. Yeah, I really do.
03:13It's better for performance a lot of the time
03:15to not break it up as much as possible.
03:17So I love that.
03:19When he told me he wanted to do that whole sequence in one shot,
03:22I was salivating.
03:24As a film nerd, a camera nerd, I was like,
03:27Oh my God, yes, please.
03:29That's awesome.
03:30What was the process of deciding to film it that way?
03:32And also, what would you say was the most difficult shot to put together?
03:35The process, it's a lot of thinking about it during the screenwriting.
03:39But then also, during the pre-production period,
03:42I would chat to the cinematographer
03:44and I would always be talking about,
03:46What can we do that's different?
03:48One thing was, let's turn the lights on.
03:50In a lot of horror movies, the lights are off.
03:52It's very dark. I wanted to turn them all on.
03:54Because what's the difference?
03:55Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter for The Invisible Man.
03:57And then we started talking about,
03:59How do we convince people this is real?
04:01The Invisible Man is kind of an outlandish concept.
04:03One way to convince people it's real
04:05is to film it in these long shots.
04:07So people never see the cuts.
04:09You can't hide from a one-shot scene.
04:12So we did that.
04:14And then finally, we just decided to use the camera
04:17to explore empty spaces a lot.
04:19So it's all about the audience's paranoia
04:21driving their enjoyment of the film.
04:23One thing that strikes me as different between this
04:25and just going back to the original, the 1933 version,
04:27which I love also,
04:29but what's cool about this version is that
04:31Griffin is driven insane by the serum that he takes.
04:34For here, in this movie,
04:36it's very much the kind of technology
04:38is almost accentuating Adrian's kind of insanity.
04:40I'm curious if that's a dynamic that you were approaching
04:42when you were considering the part.
04:44What was really interesting is doing an awful lot of research
04:46into personality disorder
04:49and into narcissism.
04:54Sorry, my brain's just suddenly gone a bit slow.
04:56Into narcissism.
04:58And I saw this really interesting,
05:01well, it was actually a really disturbing interview
05:03with this woman that had been in this relationship
05:05with a narcissist, and she was saying
05:07that the worst thing is, for a narcissist,
05:09if you leave them,
05:11the rage and revenge that comes with it
05:14is incredible.
05:18And so that was the kind of,
05:21sort of reading up about that
05:23and reading about, because it's to do with
05:25you hurt me.
05:27How dare you hurt me.
05:29You didn't know that you could be hurt.
05:31Exactly.
05:33And so that, for me,
05:35was the driving force of why Adrian does what he does.
05:37And it's a loss of reality,
05:40and it's about power,
05:42and if you lose that power,
05:44he's not a good guy.
05:46But it felt important.
05:48It felt important that we show what these people,
05:50what these men are like.
05:52And I know for a fact
05:54that so many people have experienced
05:57horrific relationships like this,
06:00so it felt necessary.
06:03He said that wherever I went,
06:05he would find me,
06:07walk right up to me,
06:09and I wouldn't be able to see him.
06:11Can you talk about filming those action scenes?
06:13Because I assume you're working with somebody
06:15in a green screen outfit?
06:17Yeah, there's a lot of different elements
06:19that go into it.
06:21Combination of VFX and real effects
06:23and stunts.
06:25And we had an incredible stunt team,
06:27and a great stunt double for Ollie
06:29and a great stunt double for me.
06:31Deserve a huge shout out.
06:34But we did a lot of stuff.
06:36Lee asked me at the very beginning
06:38before I went to Australia,
06:40he called me and he said,
06:42I would like you to do as much as you can.
06:44And I said, I'm down to try it.
06:51What were the experiences like
06:53working in scenes with the Invisible Man?
06:55Just executing those sequences.
06:57I mean, it was fun,
06:59but he wasn't there.
07:01I mean, Ollie is great
07:03and he's super talented,
07:05but I didn't really get to work closely
07:07with him because
07:09he was invisible.
07:11He wasn't supposed to be there.
07:13And I had to really work by myself
07:15when doing those dramatic scenes.
07:17But I can't wait to see it all come together.
07:19This movie never tries to make you feel like
07:21Cecilia's crazy.
07:23It never has that kind of ambiguity
07:25where it's like, oh, maybe it is all just in her head.
07:27And ultimately, I think that is really strong
07:29from the perspective of the character,
07:31but I'm curious if that was ever something
07:33that you kind of went back and forth on.
07:35It's funny, early on,
07:37there's this idea of the movie
07:39could maybe exist as just a purely paranoid movie.
07:41If you think about classic paranoia movies
07:43like Rosemary's Baby,
07:45the question is there.
07:47What's really happening? Is she imagining it?
07:49Right up until the end, you're thinking,
07:51is this real or not?
07:53But I feel like I've done that.
07:55I've written the Haunted House movie
07:57so I was like, I have to be a bit sensitive
07:59with this topic of these relationships.
08:01So I just wanted to present
08:03Elizabeth Moss' character
08:05as the central character
08:07and the audience surrogate.
08:09So you spend the whole movie in her shoes.
08:11You never step outside her viewpoint.
08:13It's really a one-woman show in that way.
08:15Yeah, and very powerful
08:17because you're with her emotionally through the entire process.
08:19She goes through the ringer, you go through the ringer.
08:21I saw it by myself in a screening room
08:23in New York,
08:25because I didn't know I could invite anybody
08:27and apparently I may have been able to, but I didn't.
08:29So I saw it by myself
08:31in a theater, which is like,
08:33if you see this movie, you're going to be like, that's insane to do.
08:35And I was legitimately scared.
08:37I was legitimately jumped out of my...
08:39I knew we had the script and I knew we had
08:41the drama,
08:43but the scares and the fear
08:45and the visual effects and everything,
08:47that's what I hadn't seen yet.
08:49So I was so, so relieved
08:51and moved and proud.