A Few Words About A few words about…™ The Invisible Man (2020) — in 4k UHD Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Robert Harris]

For The Invisible Man, Blumhouse, in league with director Leigh Whannell, goes beyond base genre, and has created a beautifully re-invented version of the 1933 Universal classic of the same name, starring Claude Rains, as directed by James Whale, from the novel by H.G. Wells.

Elizabeth Moss does not play the title character.

I had problems with this one on a tech basis, especially in projection, which reproduced many shots and sequences, as "invisible," to the projected image, so totally lost in the dark imagery, that there's virtually nothing to see. It could just as easily have been a radio play.

That aside, and I've not had an opportunity to check it via OLED, the film is wonderful, and will presumably be enjoyed via Universal's 4k release on flat panels everywhere. I'd love to know what this looked like theatrically. I've also, in all fairness, not had the ability to check it out on a new JVC, which deals with the HDR issues far better than Sony.

Dolby Atmos is wonderfully provocative, and creepy.


Image – 5 (Dolby Vision / HDR10) – problems in projection

Audio – 5 (Dolby Atmos)

Pass / Fail – Pass

Highly Recommended (for content, not imagery)

RAH

 

[dpippel]

My wife and I watched The Invisible Man last night and THOROUGHLY enjoyed the film. Very fresh take on the material and incredibly well directed, acted, and shot. Kudos to Leigh Whannell and Stefan Duscio! And Elisabeth Moss! I will say though that the most of characters she inhabits tend to have major troubles with the opposite sex.

As for the image, it's definitely a dark, muted film, but looked very fine in Dolby Vision on my 65" LG OLED panel. The Atmos audio is to die for, and the sound design really helps create the creepy vibe of the movie.

 

[sbjork]

I'd love to know what this looked like theatrically. I've also, in all fairness, not had the ability to check it out on a new JVC, which deals with the HDR issues far better than Sony.

I just watched it last night on my JVC RS2000, and it looked very good indeed. The black levels of the film itself seem a bit elevated -- they are a bit gray relative to the letterbox bars even in the darkest scenes -- but from other reviews that I have read, that seems to be the case even on a flat panel. But I never lost detail in the darkest images.

JVC's frame by frame tone mapping is not perfect, but it is the best thing out there right now for projection. I have hit very few movies that it seems to struggle with, and The Invisible Man was not one of them. It looked great on the "auto" setting without needed to tweak things. In fact, due to the grayer black levels, I stopped the auto-iris down a couple of notches and it still looked great.