Crafting even a relatively simple action sequence for a movie can be an exceptionally challenging task. Maintaining safety is always a concern for everybody, and just pulling off certain details can require multiple professionals and vital coordination. It’s practically magic how films can pull things off sometimes – but that’s especially true for Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, which creates some intense and impressive fight scenes involving the titular villain.
The process to create these sequences was quite a memorable one for star Elisabeth Moss, whom I got to speak with about the movie earlier this month during the Los Angeles press day for The Invisible Man. Interviewing both the actress and the film’s writer/director, one subject I asked about was the process required to bring the action sequences to life, and you can watch them discuss it in the video below:
In The Invisible Man, Elisabeth Moss stars as Cecilia Kass – a woman who has spent years trapped in an abusive marriage with genius scientist Adrian Griffin (played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen). When she finally manages to escape, sneaking out of their home in the middle of the night, he successfully fakes his own death, and makes her life a living hell thanks to his very special breakthroughs in the field of optics.
This leads to multiple sequences in the film where Cecilia is attacked by an enemy she can’t see, and it created some very interesting challenges for Elisabeth Moss and Leigh Whannell on set.
For the actress’ part, Moss noted that she doesn’t exactly have extensive experience in the world of action movies and with fight scenes, so the work she was doing on The Invisible Man was novel. In addition to dealing with the heavy emotional side of things (and there is definitely a lot that is weighing on Cecilia at all times), she also had to balance her approach to handle all of the intensely physical moments as well – something she laughed saying she doesn’t have to do often in the making of her television series, The Handmaid’s Tale.
What made shooting The Invisible Man’s action sequences even more special, though, was the way in which Leigh Whannell chose to shoot the material. Rather than using a bunch of quick cuts and lots of edits, the director opted to try and utilize a lot of unbroken shots that allow the audience to feel trapped with the non-visible Adrian Griffin just as much as Cecilia is.
It required a considerable amount of effort to pull off by both the movie’s cast and crew, but it had some special results. Said Whannell,
The invisible man is kind of an outlandish concept. One way to convince people it's real is to film it in these long shots so people never see the cuts. You can't hide from a one shot scene. So we did that.
Also starring Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, and Harriet Dyer, The Invisible Man arrives in theaters everywhere this Friday – and this is only the start of our coverage. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more from my interviews with the cast and filmmakers behind the excellent new horror film in the coming days, as well as features, videos, behind-the-scenes content, and more.
