The Dark Universe was gone before it ever really got going, thanks to the 2017 film “The Mummy.” But with characters as rich as iconic as the Universal Monsters, you know the studio wouldn’t wait long to get them back on their feet. Enter Blumhouse’s upcoming low-budget horror film “The Invisible Man.”
And as we can see in the first images (courtesy of EW), Blumhouse is going in a different direction for its horror film than the Marvel-influenced action spectacle that Tom Cruise tried to launch in his failed film. Writer-director Leigh Whannell is bringing some realism to the monster film, with a plot that is focused on a woman (Elisabeth Moss) that is trapped in a violent, controlling relationship with an incredibly rich scientist (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) attempts to escape the controlling man…who happens to eventually turn invisible.
When fans think of “The Invisible Man,” it’s not unusual to imagine a man wrapped in bandages walking around in a trench coat. But for the new film, Whannell explained that he didn’t want to just rehash that imagery.
“I wanted to kind of get away from that and make something that was really modern, really grounded, or as grounded as you can be when you’re dealing with a film called ‘The Invisible Man,’” he said. “Just something that was really tense and scary in a way The Invisible Man hasn’t been before.”
As for whether or not this new horror film will spawn a new franchise, or somehow tie into the revamped Dark Universe that Universal is clearly hoping to put together (combined with Paul Feig’s “Dark Army”), the Whannell is hush-hush. But not because he is hiding something, but instead, he just doesn’t want to jinx it.
“I don’t know,” the director said. “I haven’t put any thought into a sequel. I’m a pretty superstitious filmmaker. I don’t want to jinx anything. I’ve been involved with movies that have had a lot of sequels, like the original ‘Saw’ film obviously spawned a whole franchise, as did ‘Insidious.’”
He continued, “But I can tell you with total honesty that in the case of both of those films, I never thought about a sequel. I would never want to jinx the release of a movie by thinking about what comes next.”
Blumhouse’s “The Invisible Man” arrives in theaters on February 28. The first trailer is expected to launch tomorrow.
