VANISHING ACT
Unlike the monster, the story never disappears in The Unseen
Universal has tried twice now to kick off its Dark Universe series of monster movies, first with Dracula Untold in 2014, then with last year’s The Mummy. Both fared so poorly the entire universe is now on hold, a predicament straight out of the Old Testament. But what if the studio is going about it the wrong way? Its Invisible Man reboot, still loosely slated for 2020, aims to throw millions of bucks and one Johnny Depp at the problem. But for a fraction of that, Vancouver makeup artist (and now writerdirector) Geoff Redknap released his own version of the story, which made the festival circuit in 2016, before getting a limited release this summer.
The Unseen is primarily a family drama. Aden Young stars as Bob Langmore, a failed hockey player who dresses in lumberjack shirts and works a dead-end job at a mill somewhere in Northern British Columbia. He’s not particularly happy, but he prefers the solitude.
Oh, and he’s slowly turning invisible. Did I mention that?
Anyway, down in Vancouver, his ex-wife Darlene (Camille Sullivan) is raising troubled teen Eva (Julia Sarah Stone). Bob decides to pay them a visit, and finances his trip by transporting some contraband materials,
which eventually puts him in the way of some nasty drug-dealing types. Eva, meanwhile, goes off to explore a semi-abandoned mental hospital with her friends, and never comes back.
It’s a busy plot, but Redknap bides his time before carefully drawing all the threads together. And speaking of knowing what he’s doing, the man whose FX credits include Deadpool, Star Trek: Beyond and The X-Files waits a good long while before giving us a close look at Bob’s vanishing body. When it comes to invisibility, less is more.
So rather than relying on the fascinating image of a semitransparent parent, The Unseen gets its traction from Young ’s portrayal of a gruff loner, and from Stone’s brittle, wounded young woman, trying to figure out how to connect with a father she barely knows. It’s story first, spectacle second. I can only hope if the Dark Universe ever lurches into action again, Redknap finds himself as part of the crew. The nascent franchise could probably learn a few things from him.