The Invisible is a 2007 Foreign Remake of the Swedish film Den Osynlige, directed by David S. Goyer and starring Justin Chatwin and Margarita Levieva: Nick Powell, rich and bored and almost done with high school, hates his life. His mother has his career all planned out for him, but he would rather run away to London and study creative writing - he has even bought a plane ticket. Meanwhile, his best friend Pete owes a debt to thief and gang leader Annie Newton. When someone sells Annie out, she suspects Pete, who decides to pin it on Nick, thinking that Nick has already left for London. Except Nick has decided not to go...
We see Annie and her thugs beat the living tar out of Nick (it doesn't help that Nick takes the opportunity to taunt Annie's "brokenness"). We watch it get out of hand. We see Annie and her thugs leave him for dead in a sewer. And then, next morning, we see Nick walking down the road into town, not a scratch on him, and wondering why nobody can see him...
Not so much a mystery or a thriller as a beautifully shot character piece, all mists and gray skies of the Pacific Northwest, with cruelly effective imagine spots, Character Development and a Bittersweet Ending.
The Invisible was the last film to be released by Hollywood Pictures.
The Invisible contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Annie has no problem using a gun.
- Animal Motifs: Birds. Annie's a Broken Bird, Nick realizes he's not dead during a scene involving a sparrow, and the final scene has Victor with a bird on his shirt.
- An Astral Projection, Not a Ghost: Nick is still alive but he needs Annie to save his comatose body before he succumbs to the wounds.
- Ate His Gun: Nick almost does this in his dream.
- Berserk Button: Nick might have walked away with a cracked rib or two if he hadn't kept calling Annie "broken".
- Big Sister Instinct: Annie stands up to her step mom for her brother, makes sure he has something to eat, and tries to inspire him to be better then her.
- Bittersweet Ending: While Nick is found thanks to Annie giving the location of his body away to the police—and does wake up when she talks to him in his bed, Annie ultimately dies of a gunshot wound to the stomach that she sustained while confronting Marcus—who she then took out in self-defense. Pete's saved before his attempt at taking his own life goes through as well, Nick's cleared the air with his mother with Annie's help right before she dies and then after he recovers, Nick goes to look after Victor to make sure Annie's bother will be alright in her absence.
- Black Humor: Nick's (kind-of second) suicide attempt dream. Admit it, you laughed.
- Broken Bird: Annie, and calling her that name is her Berserk Button.
- Cool Car: Annie's gorgeous black muscle car.
- Deadpan Snarker: Both Annie and Nick. After a fight:Principle Whitcliff: Does anybody want to explain what happened?Nick: She finds me irresistible?
- Determinator: While it's true that stomach wounds don't kill right away, Annie just got more and more badass the closer she got to death.
- Domestic Abuser: Annie's boyfriend Marcus was a complete jerk who had no problem shooting her in the gut when she tried to get the location of Nick's body out of him.
- Everyone Went to School Together: Not really "everyone", but the scene with Annie at Nick's house reveals that they both went to the same elementary school as kids.
- Flatline Plotline: Nick is "dead" enough to become a ghost, but it turns out he isn't quite dead yet, and once his body is found they are able to revive him.
- Foreign Remake: To "Den Osynlige".
- Freudian Excuse: And a fairly legitimate one, at that. Annie may be a crook, but she also grew up in a poor family and her parents are horrible people. That said, Nick doesn't buy into it, rightly pointing out that Annie's poor home life doesn't justify her killing him.
- Imagine Spot: Done very creepily with the way Nick imagines doing things, and then realizes he's affected nothing.
- Invisible to Normals: Nick is invisible to everyone, and his presence can only (barely, and not consistently it seems) be felt by Annie. And animals.
- I See Almost Dead People: After a while, Nick realizes that Annie can hear him.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: Annie tells her step mom that if anything happens to her little brother Victor she'll come back and kill her step mom.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Annie, after realizing she may have just killed Nick.
- Not So Stoic: Nick's mother, when she breaks down at her desk. It finally gets through to Nick how much pain she's been through.
- Only Mostly Dead: Nick realizes this in a wonderful little scene with a bird.Nick: I'm alive. Holy shit, I'm alive!
- Parental Abandonment: Annie's mother is dead, Nick's father is dead, and Nick's mother has shut herself off emotionally from her son.
- Pet the Dog: The first time Nick sees Annie doing this, he's furious that she's "act[ing] human."
- Spared by the Adaptation: In the original film Nick dies when Annie pulls the plug on him because he asked her to.
- Trailers Always Lie: The film's tone and story arc is a bit different from what'd you expect from the trailer, implying that Nick needed to "solve the mystery of [his] death" but it's pretty clear what happened in the actual film. The trailer also implies that Nick and Annie already have a love-interest bond; Annie's a gang leader whose actions led to his death in the first place.
- Trailers Always Spoil: A certain trailer
included a strange old man that revealed to Nick (and the audience) that he was in limbo, he couldn't contact anyone, and that he had the potential to get back into his body. The kicker? Annoyingly, this character was cut out of the movie! - Wham Line:
- An interesting case of a line that is one not because of what was said, but purely that it was spoken at all:
Nick: They'll catch you, Annie!
Annie: Never!- This line thus reveals that Nick, previously Invisible to Normals, can be seen and heard by Annie, a fact that goes on to drive the remainder of the plot.