After an attack leaves him in limbo -- invisible to the living and also near death -- a teenager discovers the only person who might be able help him is his attacker.
19 Jan Invisible (2007)
Disembodied Eye
Many of these teen movies have to distinguish themselves by leveraging narrative tricks. That’s because the market restricts the story so much that it is impossible to stand out.
The narrative device that interests me is when the viewer is deliberately placed in the movie.
Let’s face it, when we see an ordinary movie, we are invited into a world in which we are a ghost. We see, we can wander and be curious. But we cannot touch anything and the people in the story are generally unaware of our presence.
So how do you cleverly find a way to put the viewer in the movie. Well, you make an invisible ghost that sees what you do. If your audience is the kind that jabbers and shouts during the movie, it is fine to have the character do that as well. Better even.
Make sure that we know he is a “writer,” so you know that he probably wrote the story you are seeing.
Maybe even at the end, have him put a message on a plane to send to “the sky.”
So this was clever in terms of its narrative engineering. Otherwise, dreadful.
Posted in 2010
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
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