The Invisible Man is a perfectly harrowing and positively hard-to-look-away horror sci-fi, and, might I add, psychological thriller.

Starring the amazing Elizabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass, this is yet another one of those films that I loved and then discovered was based on a novel I have ignorantly not granted my reading presence.

This 2020 film is just what we needed to tell us how exactly a relationship between an architect (Cecilia) and an optics engineer (Adrian) can go wrong.

While I have mad respect for both these professions, the characters are so well written, you can’t help but admire the depth of their dynamic. Adrian, for one, takes the role of the abusive ex-boyfriend to a literally unimagined level. It’s as if Tony Stark built a suit to stalk and torment Pepper Potts for leaving him. I know, terrible example, but stick with me.

Cecelia takes the role of the isolated, abused girlfriend to an entirely new depth. When the whole world shuns her and says she’s a lunatic, she takes matters into her own hands. And resolves her conflict on her own.

I mean, Cecelia is just such an amazingly and thoroughly awe-inspiring character. She redefined the damsel-in-distress trope that mostly follows a woman recovering from an abusive relationship. Nor does she adopt the industry favourite girl-boss high-action-low-practicability getup.

No girlfriend. That’s not our Cecelia.

Cecelia is a woman who is angry. Anger, most people overlook, is also a very big thing that abuse victims feel.

She is angry at how Adrian treated her. She is angry at his plots within plots that make her look like a fool and a pawn in his games. She is angry at how people around her are dealing with her ordeal.

She is mad with anger. But the good kind.

Cecelia has entered the Feminine Rage dominion.

And honey, when a woman has reached the point of her pure and unfiltered rage, she is no longer scared, for her rage at all those things that belittled her is far more dangerous than the fear those things caged her in.

Elizabeth Moss is a gem in our world for how she portrayed this amazing character. Cecelia is not a perfect person. Not nearly a perfect friend or sister.

And she didn’t have to be a perfect girlfriend, for her boyfriend was altogether too much of a trash and scum of a human being to set standards.

But what Cecelia is good at is learning from her ordeal.

She knows Adrian a good deal. She unravels that it is Adrian and Adrian alone who is tormenting her while being invisible. Even after the police close the story with Tom being the bad guy, she knows her story has not yet been done justice.

So when the world exonerates her, but doesn’t exactly blame the real culprit in her eyes, she takes it into her own hands.

And man, just how much I love Elizabeth Moss here.

She doesn’t scream profanities at Adrian across the table. She doesn’t physically take Adrian down with her camera-ready jiu-jitsu skills. She calmly enters his territory and takes full power.

In the entirety of Cecelia’s journey, she does not try to overpower her nemesis. She always tries to evade it. Keep a distance. Try to protect herself and those she loves.

It is throughout this journey that she learns a heck of a lot about her enemy. How he thinks, why he thinks that, and what he will be planning next.

So she enters his fold, like a lioness knowing how utterly in control she now is.

She sits at the dinner table, no longer evasive or subdued. As Adrian drags on about his undeniable fidelity to her, she sits calm, composed, and calculated.

Adrian is no longer in control of her. She is the one in control of writing this scene.

She puts on her own act and feigns vulnerability to get him to confess to every crime he committed in his invisible suit. And that insufferable trash bag of a prick has the audacity to come over to her and say ‘Surprise’.

The same thing the ungodly terrifying invisible suit guy said to her when he was tormenting her and giving us good quality jump scares.

That was the final straw. His confession might not have been caught on wire, but it was as good as sealed for Cecelia.

Adrian is a monster. And monsters cannot be reasoned with. They can only be put down.

So she puts down this monster. She architects the scene. (Get it?) His suicide, her innocent call for help, and the perfect timing for her to be out of the security camera’s sight to say ‘Surprise’ to the monster as he lay beneath her, his life bleeding out of him.

Perfection.

Absolute and utterly errorless, calculated perfection.

That’s Feminine Rage, depicted right.

I hope Anya Taylor-Joy would be proud. As she stated in “Anya Taylor-Joy’s Dark Materials” by Olivia Jenson for GQ Magazine:

“I’m not promoting violence – but I am promoting women being seen as people. We have reactions that are not always dainty or unmessy.”

Elizabeth Moss is so admirable in this role. Her rawness, the emptiness in her eyes, the fury behind them, just marvelous to watch. Her depiction is so grounded. She plays Cecelia, rough around the edges, imperfect. Her hair is not somehow impeccably styled, and her makeup is not on point. She’s damaged, she’s healing. She’s real. My words can only fall short of praise.

Thank you for your reading time, I hope upon you healthy relationships and a friendship that goes like

Cecelia: “You heard it right, James? What did it sound like to you?”

James: “It sounded a lot like he killed himself.”