‘The Invisible Man’ is impactful horror for portrayal of oppressive relationship

In the middle of a dark night, angry waves crash against a cliff, atop of which sits a large, modern home encircled by a wall.

Inside the mansion’s bedroom, Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) opens her eyes. She slips out of bed and quietly retrieves a hidden bottle of pills she has used to drug the man lying next to her, whom we will come to know as Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, “The Haunting of Hill House”).

Leaving the room, Cecilia turns a hallway camera to face her still-slumbering partner. She walks to a different area of the home, this one full of high-tech equipment, and uses a computer to disable other cameras around the property.

She slips out the house — not before loudly kicking the bowl of their dog, Zeus — and finds the canine in the garage. After freeing the pooch from its collar, a car alarm is accidentally activated, and Cecilia must run for the wall, which she frantically scales.

She is picked up on the road by her sister, Emily (Harriet Dyer, “The InBetween”), but, before they can speed away, they are met by an awakened, furious Adrian, who screams at Cecilia and punches through a car window.

So begins “The Invisible

Man,” a very 21st-century take on the horror character introduced by novelist H.G. Welles in the late 1800s. This film — with its science-fiction slant — delivers scares and works as a heightened examination of obsession and an abusive relationship.

A Universal Pictures release, “The Invisible Man” was to have been part of the studio’s classic-monsters-populated Dark Universe.

However, after 2017’s Tom Cruise-starring “The Mummy” was pulled apart by critics and died a stiff death at the box office — it really wasn’t all that terrible, but the market had spoken — Universal scrapped the DU.

Instead, the studio has said, it will use horror motifs as a basis for a collection of stand-alone films utilizing its stable of classic monsters.

First up is “The Invisible Man,” produced by Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions (“Get Out,” “Happy Death Day”) and written and directed by Leigh Whannell (“Saw,” “Upgrade”).

Early on in the film, Cecilia is hiding out at the home of a childhood friend, capable cop James Lanier (Aldis Hodge, “Straight Outta Compton”), who lives with his soon-to-be-college-age daughter, Sydney (Storm Reid, “A Wrinkle in

Time”).

Cecilia is terrified Adrian will find her — she is spooked by a harmless jogger during an aborted attempt to retrieve the mail from the box along the street and subsequently lashes out at her sister when she visits, saying Adrian could have followed her.

But Emily brings news: Adrian, a pioneer in the field of optics, has died, according to news reports. This, obviously, is a huge relief to Cecilia, who says Adrian tried to control every aspect of her life and divulges she secretly had been using birth control while he wanted them to have a child.

“You’re here with us now, and you’re safe,” Emily says. “He’s gone.”

But is he gone and is she safe?

Even after Adrian’s lawyer brother, Tom (Michael Dorman, “For All Mankind”), informs her Adrian has left her $5 million, it isn’t long before she becomes spooked in a seemingly otherwise empty room. Then, a stovetop fire mysteriously happens when Cecilia briefly leaves the kitchen one morning to wake Sydney.

Things get stranger from there.

Given the title of the movie, we know the general, if invisible, shape of things, and soon Cecilia is convinced Adrian has developed tech to allow himself to disappear and wreak havoc on her life.

Of course, no one — not even those who love her — believe her. As she is being tortured, they see her as having some sort of breakdown.

What might have been a fairly forgettable flick is, in the capable hands of Whannell, something several notches above that.

“The Invisible Man” is not perfect. It is, after all, a horror movie, so you have those frustrating why-would-she-gointo-that-room moments. However, the film is so well shot — and the music so unnerving — that it delivers in terms of constant tension and offers just about the right amount of scares.

Plus, Moss (“Us,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”) is a real asset to the proceedings You will feel for Cecilia — the guess here is some victims of abusive partners may identify strongly with her — and desperately hope she can find a way to take control of an increasingly dire situation.

Whannell’s plot takes some relatively clever twists and turns that keep the movie engaging even as its two-hour runtime feels just a tad long.

Without spoiling exactly how Adrian may have turned himself into an invisible man, “The Invisible Man,” on top of its other successes, works as somewhat of a cautionary tale.

You may have to squint, but that we can see “The Invisible Man” actually happening at some point is a little unnerving.