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Smart, Fast-Paced Movies to Watch If You Loved The Invisible Man
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While Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man might give the impression of being a campy horror movie in its wild trailer, it’s a thoughtful film about a woman who goes up against her abusive ex, who quite literally has an invisibility suit. The film turns H.G. Wells’s classic into a feminist thriller that shares themes with both The Handmaid’s Tale and Black Mirror. It’s a masterclass in tension-building, bolstered by Elisabeth Moss‘s strong lead performance as Cecilia and support from Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge, and Storm Reid. If you’re looking for a similar adrenaline rush, there are plenty of socially relevant horrors and thrillers out there to get your blood racing. Ahead, we’ve rounded up a comprehensive list of smart, fast-paced, and twisted movies to watch if you loved The Invisible Man, from The Babadook to Gaslight.
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Us
Lupita Nyong’o leads Jordan Peele‘s sophomore film as Adelaide, a woman who discovers that her family (and the rest of the world) has underground doppelgängers called the Tethered. Thematically, Us is fairly different from The Invisible Man, but both films do deal with how the lead characters process trauma. (Plus, Elisabeth Moss stars in Us as well!)
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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
This dark David Fincher thriller follows Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, a gifted computer hacker with a dark past of surviving abuse. While investigating the disappearance of a woman for a wealthy client, Lisbeth grapples with her own abusive history, much like Cecilia in The Invisible Man.
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The One I Love
In this thriller, Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass portray a couple who head on a retreat per their therapist’s (Ted Danson) advice. There are no invisible suits there, but similar themes of deception and delusion do come by way of doppelgängers!
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Gerald's Game
This intense Stephen King adaptation follows Jessie (Carla Gugino), a woman whose husband dies just as they’re trying to reignite their relationship with a kinky game. Memories of Jessie’s past resurface as she’s handcuffed to a bed, including abuses from her husband and her father. Much like Cecilia, Jessie must undergo an intense process to deal with her trauma.
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The Babadook
In The Babadook, Essie Davis plays an overworked widow named Amelia whose son Sam starts behaving erratically and claiming that a storybook monster named Mister Babadook exists. Both Amelia and Cecilia, exhausted by nonbelievers, begin questioning their mental states.
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Kill Bill: Vol. 1
At its core, Quentin Tarantino‘s stylized martial arts thriller is about a woman (Uma Thurman) who seeks revenge against her terrible employer-slash-ex and his Deadly Vipers squad. While Cecilia escapes Adrian at the beginning of The Invisible Man, she too realizes that she must face and defeat him once and for all.
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Halloween
This John Carpenter film is an oldie but a goodie. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Laurie Strode, a teenager who is stalked and tormented by Michael Meyers. The masked killer hurts those close to Laurie, much like Adrian with Cecilia.
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Scream
In Wes Craven’s Scream, high-schooler Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) finds herself tormented by a menacing killer wreaking havoc in her community. Sidney, like Cecilia, toughens up to face the man (later revealed to be two men) so keen on torturing her and killing people she knows.
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The Handmaiden
This steamy Korean psychological thriller follows a woman pickpocket who’s enlisted to scam an heiress, but the two end up falling in love. The women are resourceful like Cecilia, scheming against the men who manipulate them.
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Practical Magic
Practical Magic might ostensibly just be a cozy Autumn movie about Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as witch sisters, but its themes run deep. Kidman, who plays Gillian, confronts her abusive lover through witchcraft and sisterhood. Cecilia might not have magic, but she does have to go up against Adrian.
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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
A lonely woman vampire goes after bad men in an Iranian ghost town in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Again, Cecilia might not have the girl’s powers, but she is set on defeating Adrian to stop his unsavory plans.
Watch A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night on Amazon. You’ll also find it on Kanopy through a library service.
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Black Swan
If you love a twisty thriller like The Invisible Man, you can’t go wrong with Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. Natalie Portman stars as Nina, a gifted ballerina who develops a dark relationship with her new competition, Lily (Mila Kunis), and begins questioning her sanity.
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Gaslight
Adrian persistently gaslights Cecilia throughout their relationship and makes people question her mental state even after they’re no longer together. But where does the term “gaslight” come from? Well, it actually comes from the 1944 thriller Gaslight, in which Ingrid Bergman plays a singer whose new husband makes her believe that she is going insane.
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Queen of Earth
Loved Elisabeth Moss in The Invisible Man? Moss is very much in her element in Queen of Earth, in which she plays an emotionally fragile woman who just lost her father and a relationship. When her friend (Katherine Waterston) takes her down to a lake house, tensions flicker as the psychological thriller progresses.
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Hard Candy
In this bare-knuckled crime thriller, Ellen Page plays Hayley, a teenager who catches and tortures a local predator (Patrick Wilson). Cecilia doesn’t quite have the upper hand for as long as Hayley does, but the idea of fully serving justice is there.