There are few supernatural dramas that come with a sigh of relief as much as THE INVISIBLE. It's a film that opens up new areas in terms of what we as audiences think on the afterlife, or purgatory as the previews so plainly suggest.

THE INVISIBLE is about Nick Powell (Justin Chatwin) who thinks he's done everything that's expected in him but has gotten little in return not only from his own mother Diane (Marcia Gay Harden) but his best friend and somewhat girlfriend as well. He's someone who stands up to the school bully Annie (Margarita Levieva) as well as have a romantic side since he wants to go overseas after high school to study poetry and writing. The life he thinks is perfect is turned upside down when Annie believes that he turned her in to the cops. She beats him to the edge of his life to point that she believes she's killed him, so, she and her friends hide the body in hopes of covering up the crime.

The crime won't stay buried as Nick awakens to find himself as a disembodied spirit on the verge of death who needs his body to be rescued before he does cross over to the land of the dead.

It comes as a surprise as the man behind such screenplays as DARK CITY, the BLADE film and television series, and BATMAN BEGINS did not write this film as well but I guess screenwriters Mick Davis and Christine Roum did an adequate job in that this is one of the most original takes on the idea on purgatory in a film in a long while. One of the best aspects of the film comes from the fact that in Nick's disembodied state he affects everything around him but in the physical world nothing ever changes. It makes for some very interesting cinematography and story elements. Also, unlike in most films of this sub-genre there is no true villain just "broken" souls as Nick plainly describes Annie on several occasions in the film. The screenplay goes a long way in presenting Nick and Annie as two sides of the same coin, in which this incident that comes between them forces them to come to grips with the demons of their past. This is made more evident from the fact that Annie is the only one that can hear Nick in his disembodied state. This not only plays as a plot device for Annie to drive the film but it also comments on her mental state as we realize that she is slowing feeling guilty for what she has done.

The "invisible" not only represents the idea that Nick is missing but that both Annie and he are invisible to their parents and to the world at large and that the only way in which to be seen is to do or be something larger than life. In Nick's case it is disobeying his mother to sneak off overseas to go to school and in Annie's case it is being criminal and lowlife even to her own lowlife and criminal friends.

Few films of this genre strive to reach the emotional levels of this film and we are all the more indebted to this one.

Learn more about this author, Kevin Powers.
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