Reviews by Matt

I have been betrayed. The one thing in my life that I though I could count on to be honest with me has done the unthinkable. I have been lied to by a movie trailer. Well, maybe not lied to as much as I was misled. Will I ever trust what I see again? Maybe. All I know is that the trailer for “The Invisible” presents a completely different movie than what it is.

Nick Powell (some actor whose name is not even worth looking up on IMDb) is close to graduating high school. One day he is attacked by Annie (an actress who will fade into oblivion) because she thinks he told the cops that she robbed a store. He is beaten within an inch of his life and left to die in the woods. The next morning Nick walks into school like nothing happened. He soon learns that no one can see him and realizes that he is dead. Later he figures out that he is not dead and that he is still alive. He then desperately tries to get someone to find his body so that he can live again.
I’m just going to skip the normal stuff of how the acting was, how the plot unfolded and all the other boring, technical crap and skip right to the good stuff.
I was duped. If you watched the trailer for this, then this is the story you may get; Nick Powell is beaten up and left for dead. The next day at school he realizes that no one can see him. Eventually after talking to a creepy old guy, who is also dead, he learns that if he can solve the mystery of his own death that he could live again. So he goes to his girlfriend, Annie, to get her to save him.

Most of that is true. Except for a few things, the most insignificant of these is the creepy old man. He is not in the movie at all. Nick figures out that he is still alive and that he needs to have his body found. That is fine, I can accept that. I understand that the trailers are made months before the movie is finished. Things change and I have come to except cut scenes making their way into trailers.

One thing I will never understand is Annie’s transformation from trailer to movie. She is not his girlfriend, good friend, or even someone who likes him. SHE’S THE ONE WHO KICKS THE CRAP OUT OF HIM! How do you ignore that in the trailer and even show a clip of him and her lying on a bed with the word “Boyfriend” on screen. She goes from someone who cares for him to the very person who attempted to kill him. Can someone explain that to me? Why does he choose the girl who tried to kill him as the one to help him? Not really sure about that plot point. It is just one of many things not explained or even investigated.

Contrary to the trailer, he is not a perfect kid. He sells completed assignments to other students and he is at odds with his mom who thinks she knows what is best for him. So why include that in the trailer? Because if you tell the audience that the guy they are supposed to like is a cheater who hates his mom for being too smothering then you risk him not being a hero, thus keeping people away from your mediocre movie.

This was billed as a mystery. Nick has to solve the mystery of his death in order to live again, yet we know how it happened, and who did it. The only real suspense in the movie is will the cops find the body and will Annie do the right thing before it was too late. Even then the suspense is short lived because they try to wrap it all up in a short amount of time. The movie spends way too much time developing weak characters and very little time investigating the mystery.
In the end even movie trailers can lie. They are there to sell you something and most of the time they deliver on what they promise. There are those that know that if they told you the truth that there is no way you are going to see it, so they trick you and sometimes you fall for it. When that happens you find yourself sitting in a theater and wondering why you were so easily fooled.

4 out of 10
PG-13, for violence, criminality, sensuality and language - all involving teens
1hr 37min