The Invisible (2007) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

*½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Justin Chatwin, Margarita Levieva, Chris Marquette, Marcia Gay Harden
screenplay by Mick Davis and Christine Roum, based on the novel Den Osynlige by Mats Wahl
directed by David S. Goyer

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I never thought I'd find myself comparing a movie unfavourably to Disturbia, but the technical success of that hormonal-teenagers-in-peril flick bears directly on the failure of The Invisible, which aspires to the same kind of hooky teen angst without really understanding it. Say what you like about Disturbia (and I frequently do), it both completely understood and refused to condescend to the power fantasies and frustrated desires of its adolescent audience. The Invisible doesn't get that constituency–it's just cynically and transparently aimed at it. It goes through the motions of depicting the agonies of adolescence without ever seeming credible, as if the filmmakers knew they wanted to grab the teen market but had no desire to learn what that demographic actually cared about. When it throws in its supernatural device, it registers as exactly that: there's no metaphor, just a high concept in search of a purpose. The disparity between the two movies, Disturbia and The Invisible, shows why one was a surprise hit while the other sank without a trace.

Chief amongst the film's faults is the obnoxiousness of the hero. Nick Powell (War of the Worlds' Justin Chatwin) is one of those smarmy, smiley-faced movie teens who's supposed to be above it all yet comes off as merely an arrogant jerk. Yeah, his father has died, and his mother Diane (Marcia Gay Harden) is controlling–but one look at Chatwin's self-satisfied smirk tells you everything you need to know about the shallow depths of his soul. His character's pain simply can't compete with that of Annie Newton (Margarita Levieva), the troubled miscreant with whom he has a sort-of dustup. Annie's from a broken home with an AWOL father, meaning she turns to crime when she's not terrorizing the high-school nerds–and her badass demeanour makes the protagonist look supremely dull. If she's no less a cartoon than anyone else in the movie, her tendency towards sullen nastiness gives her bite and a measure of interest. Alas, once her crimes are revealed and Nick is beaten nearly to death, we realize we're going to watch the only character worth watching be marginalized by a jackass.

So the gimmick is that Nick is alive, and his spirit or something walks the earth subtly influencing people to locate his body before it's too late. Only he's still an unctuous bore, a matter compounded by Chatwin's inability to play ball with the alleged seriousness of the material. It may not entirely be the actor's fault: time and again, filmmakers refuse to admit to themselves what game they're playing, throwing in various clichés about troubled teens without providing them anything approaching emotional weight. The whole thing is on narrative autopilot, completely uninvested in anything going on; The Invisible isn't even beguiled by the possibilities of its own Shyamalan-ish hook, seeing it only in terms of how it can drive the plot forward. It feels like a bunch of people playing at making a movie, with the incongruously polished photography (by Derek Jarman collaborator Gabriel Beristain) coming to suggest a beautiful, architecturally-sound house populated by mannequins.

If Disturbia is no more intelligent than The Invisible, the more popular film understands the less noble urges of its audience and simultaneously identifies with them: it talks to kids on their own level, for good or for ill. The Invisible is the product of people so thoroughly alienated from the experience they're representing that they can't help but fail to generate empathy. Given a set of circumstances that would normally make for a deeply troubled person, they arrive at an annoying cipher like Nick; given a character as strong, complicated, and angry as Annie, they choose to condescend to her poor-little-girl status and ultimately shaft her. I can't imagine the teenager who would think much of this movie, since it name-checks their "issues" without due consideration of the people most familiar with them. Not only does The Invisible not succeed on its own terms, it can't be said to know what those terms actually are.

THE DVD
Hollywood's standard-def DVD release of The Invisible is okay. The 2.44:1, 16×9-enhanced image is lustrous enough but suffers from colour bleed and an abundance of edge-enhancement. The Dolby 5.1 audio is impressively potent, although the mix itself is rather uninspired; the sound levels are all sort of the same, allowing no one element to leave an impression. Extras begin with a commentary by director David S. Goyer and co-writer Christine Roum that proves to be more precise than a few other yak-tracks I could name. Goyer is all business in discussing his artistic decisions, from the mechanics of the opening crane/SteadiCam shot to the Vermeer influence in the film's lighting; Roum is likewise very articulate on how she tried to shape each character. If only they were working with better ideas. A second commentary features co-writer Mick Davis in a far more visceral mood: he clearly lives every line but is equally possessed of bad ideas, as when he says, with no visible irony, "I used the line 'you are so broken' because every person in this movie is broken."

Eleven deleted scenes (with optional Goyer and Roum commentary) offer little in the way of revelatory material: there are a couple of additional moments with Mom trying to coax her son into cozying up to girlfriend Suzie (Tania Saulnier), as well as a bit with a fellow not-quite-dead guy that sets up The Invisible's central conceit with exposition. Mostly it's repeats of Nick struggling to impact people's behaviour and stray inserts of cop action courtesy the ubiquitous Callum Keith Rennie. Two music videos follow: "The Kill" (5 mins.) by 30 Seconds to Mars, a concert clip of the band in ridiculous white outfits playing in front of a slapped-together Japanese-inspired backdrop (the song is passable, but lead singer Jared Leto engages in some embarrassing rock-god pomposity); and Sparta's "Taking Back Control" (3 mins.), wherein we find the band in uncomplicated performance mode occasionally interrupted by clips from The Invisible. The latter song is acceptable, its video similarly painless. Previews of National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and Disney's Blu-ray slate cue up on startup and are joined by trailers for Ratatouille, Wild Hogs, Becoming Jane, "Lost": Season 3 under the "Sneak Peeks" menu.

THE BLU-RAY DISC
by Bill Chambers Hollywood's Blu-ray release of The Invisible looks significantly prettier than its standard-def counterpart thanks to the usual improvements in shadow detail; this is a dark film and the increased definition turns that darkness from something banal into something evocative. Grain, meanwhile, appears less filtered-out, to the betterment of the image. Sadly, the edge-enhancement that dogs the DVD is present here and really a nuisance: With HD already boasting six times the sharpness of NTSC video, it's like strapping a jet pack onto Superman. The accompanying 5.1 audio is encoded for PCM uncompressed and Dolby Digital (640kbps) playback, and while I still can't vouch for the former, the latter is satisfactorily rich and pinprick clear. The only extra exclusive to this BD is Disney's "Movie Showcase" feature, which provides instant access to what are ostensibly the film's most 'demo-worthy' sequences. (Interestingly, the choices skew towards nighttime exteriors.) Otherwise, everything from the SD alternative save the previews–i.e., the deleted scenes, the commentaries, the music videos–has been retained and mastered in 1080p to boot. HiDef trailers for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Déjà Vu round out the disc.

• DVD – 102 minutes; PG-13; 2.44:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1, Spanish DD 5.1; English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Hollywood
• BLU-RAY – 102 minutes; PG-13; 2.44:1 (1080p/MPEG-4); English 5.1 LPCM, English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1; English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; BD-50; Region-free; Hollywood