Can anyone imagine what might happen if they could get away with anything unseen? How might that affect a person’s psyche and moral compass? The Invisible Man has provided at least a couple of answers to this question in the form of several movies that have come to the attention of audiences throughout the years, but only a few of them have ever really been that great while some of have been kind of ho-hum but not outright terrible. The whole idea of an invisible man movie is something that has been popular throughout the years but has still kind of fallen flat a time or two for one reason or another. With the most current version of this horror movie idea having hit the theaters recently, where it’s been a big hit no less, it’s fair to say that the whole idea might still be seen as viable and there might be more movies to come.
Here are a few of the best Invisible Man movies.
5. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
This movie was kind of there and gone since it wasn’t really considered to be the archetype that the whole idea was intended to be built around given that this invisible character happened by accident and his mental state never really deteriorated. It’s fair to say that just being invisible isn’t bound to turn someone psychotic, but it’s also a little better to admit that it’s bound to make people realize that morality is much more difficult to hold onto when there’s nothing and no one that can possibly make you face the consequences. But given that this was more comedic than anything there’s a reason why it made the bottom of the list since the original story is pretty tragic.
4. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
A lot of people might actually groan upon seeing this movie on the list since it took a handful of legendary characters and made them into a running gag for a couple of hours in a way that was hard to forgive. Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer, Jekyll and Hyde, Professor Moriarty, and even Ishmael from Moby Dick were all slammed together in a movie that to some made little if any real sense. Skinner, the invisible man of the group, was kind of entertaining since he rode the line between being a villain and a decent human being. In the end he chose to be a good guy, but remained the overall flippant and somewhat dubious character he came in as.
3. Hollow Man
This is where the true nature of the story starts to come into play since Sebastian is the type of vain and very egotistical individual that people would need to be concerned with when it comes to being unseen. His motives aren’t exactly pure but as a scientist he is trying to push the boundaries and find new limits that he can break. The only downfall is that the guy is such a massive egotist that anything that comes up against his work and his ideas is seen as a threat to be dominated or eliminated. Once he can move about without being seen by the naked eye his mental state only gets worse as he realizes that there are no consequences when you can’t find the perpetrator.
2. The Invisible Man (2020)
There’s only one reason why I put this in the second spot and it’s because quite frankly the original is almost always going to take the top spot if only because it introduced the idea and revolutionized it by putting the story on screen for the first time. But this was a remarkable twist on the old story since it’s not so much a way to change the body’s chemistry so that it can’t be seen, but instead is implementing technology in a way that’s even scarier since this is a manner that people can accept and which some people might even think is plausible somewhere down the line. Tell me that’s not unnerving, go on.
1. The Invisible Man (1933)
There are times when the classics can be beaten, but this isn’t it since the technology at this time wasn’t even close to being able to match what’s available now, and yet somehow Claude Rains and the special effects folks of the day were able to make it happen all the same. This story hearkened back to H.G. Wells’ famous tale in which the doctor that was attempting to do something groundbreaking did in fact mess around with something that he should have left alone. In the process of becoming invisible and trying to find a way to reverse the effect he did eventually go insane and mayhem ensued. At one point he was killed but the damage and havoc he created was enough to inspire future generations to carry on with the idea.
A lot of people think being invisible would be great, but once you can’t come back, it’s enough to wonder if a person would ever be the same.
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