The Biggest Unanswered Questions In The Invisible Man

Written and directed by Leigh Whannell, The Invisible Man is a rock-solid thriller — beautifully shot, smartly written, and above all, scary as hell. Elisabeth Moss plays Cecilia Kass, a woman who escapes from an abusive relationship with a dangerous man named Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). As Cecilia tries to move on with her life, she feels Adrian's presence everywhere, even when he's nowhere to be seen. As Cecilia begins to suffer a series of strange, inexplicable misfortunes, she starts to suspect that Adrian has discovered a way to become invisible, and that he's never going to let her be free.

A major reason why The Invisible Man is such a captivating film is because of the way it expertly withholds information. However, this sparse and inscrutable approach also means that, when the film is over, some of its mysteries are never fully resolved. Today, we'll be breaking down all of the questions that the film never gave us answers to, to see if we can answer them ourselves. Sometimes these will be potentially confusing story beats, plot twists that seem to come out of nowhere, or questions that are raised but never answered. Other times, we'll be going deeper, contemplating the hidden themes that lie beneath the film's surface. By doing so, we hope to show you just how much of this beautifully layered film can end up being totally invisible if you aren't looking closely.

(Be warned — we're spoiling the entire movie.)

From the moment Emily (Harriet Dyer) rescues Cecilia from Adrian's house, something seems off about their interactions. Emily is never seen comforting her sister, most of their conversations quickly turn to bickering, and most tragically of all, when strange things start happening to Cecilia, Emily doesn't take her sister's concerns seriously. One possible interpretation of their dynamic is that it's solely a necessary plot device in order for the horror of the film to function. As is the case with many horror stories, the scares can only continue if no one listens to the protagonist. But there's also a more charitable reading of their dynamic. Long before Cecilia escaped from Adrian, she and Emily were already estranged.

Think about it — the way that Cecilia's stalker drives a wedge between her and Emily is by sending a single fake email, telling Emily that Cecilia wishes she was dead. What happens next? Emily immediately cuts Cecilia out of her life. Cecilia denies that she sent the email, but Emily refuses to listen. If that email was a wildly out of character thing for Cecilia to say, you'd imagine that Emily would consider the possibility that she didn't have the full picture, and she'd listen to Cecilia's explanation. Emily's reaction only makes sense if there was already some underlying tension between the sisters that the Cecilia's tormentor was exploiting. We never get the full story about the reason for this tension, but some old wound is undeniably there.

After Cecilia is arrested for her sister's murder, a nurse meets with her and tells her that, according to a blood test, Cecilia is pregnant. The nurse says, "The test shows us that it was pretty recent. We can't be sure exactly when, but it must have been some time in the last month." So now comes an unpleasant question ... when and how did Cecilia get pregnant?

At this point, we don't know exactly how long it's been since Cecilia escaped from Adrian. Two weeks passed between when she first left and when she heard of his apparent suicide. Since then, we're guessing that at least a few more weeks have probably elapsed, if not significantly longer, perhaps even a couple months, but honestly, we're not sure. It's possible, though a bit of a stretch, that Adrian got Cecilia pregnant while they were still living together, but it's also possible that — and here's where things get real uncomfortable — he did so after she'd already left. We don't want to think about the mechanics of how exactly that would work, but given what we know about Adrian, both in terms of his immorality and his resourcefulness, it's not out of the question.

One other lingering question that the film doesn't answer, what's going to happen to Cecilia's unwanted pregnancy? We can understand why the film didn't go there, but whether or not Cecilia plans on keeping it is perhaps one of the biggest questions that the film chooses to leave unanswered.

Throughout much of the film, Adrian and his brother, Tom, appear to be in a more or less equal partnership — a unified front of awfulness. But occasionally, we get hints that their relationship might be a lot more complicated. At one point, Tom asserts that Adrian held all the power in their relationship, saying, "My brother controlled me long before he met you, Cecilia." Later, after Tom is killed, Adrian claims that the complete opposite is true, saying, "I know it didn't seem like it to the outside world, but Tom controlled me." If both brothers claim that they were the abused and powerless party in a toxic relationship, who should we believe?

We feel the evidence points towards Tom being subservient to Adrian and not the other way around. When Tom visits Cecilia in the psych ward, he tells her that they can get her out of jail if she agrees to return to her life with Adrian. This ultimatum doesn't really make sense if Tom has the power and Adrian is just a puppet. That being said, it's also potentially true that both brothers are telling the truth, at least in part. Maybe they each abused one another at various times. Or perhaps both are lying, and their claims of abuse exist solely to manipulate Cecilia's emotions. Regardless, none of this justifies the way that either of them behaves, so it also seems safe to just label them both as irredeemable jerks and move on with our lives.

In the end, Cecilia decides to kill Adrian by putting on an invisibility suit and forcing him to cut his own throat with a knife, in full view of the house's security cameras, so that he appears to be committing suicide. It's a shocking and gut-wrenching moment, but it also has the potential to be somewhat confusing, as the exact logistics of how Cecilia accomplished this plan aren't ever fully explained. When and how exactly did she get her hands on an invisibility suit of her own?

One option is that Cecilia is wearing Tom's suit from when he attacked James' house. However, this seems unlikely for two reasons. First, the suit was clearly damaged after Cecilia shot it to pieces. The second problem is that Tom's suit was presumably turned over to the police as evidence.

What seems to be a far more likely option is that Cecilia's suit is actually the one that she discovered earlier in the basement when she crept back into Adrian's house halfway through the film. In this scene, she peels it off a mannequin, presumably to steal it, but when she hears someone entering the house, Cecilia appears to stash the suit away in an air vent inside Adrian's closet. Later, when Cecilia claims that she's going to the bathroom during her dinner with Adrian, she's most likely retrieving the suit from the closet and using it to execute her master plan.

One of the reasons that The Invisible Man has been so critically well-received is because it succeeds on numerous different levels simultaneously. It's not just a vehicle for scares. It's also a film with a brain, full of deeper themes about trauma and abuse. But what exactly is it trying to say about these subjects?

First, in regards to trauma, the film shows us that even when the source of your pain is gone, trauma stays with you like an invisible monster. We see that this is the case for Cecilia even before the titular invisible man comes back into her new life. She's afraid to leave the house, she has trouble sleeping, and she jumps at shadows. Metaphorically, Cecilia's tormentor is a personification of trauma, an invisible force that stands at the foot of her bed at night, follows her down the street, and pulls her away from her friends and family.

And second, in regards to abuse, The Invisible Man shows us that when people come forward and claim that they're being abused, we tend not to believe them. We downplay their stories, invalidate their feelings, and call them "crazy." Pretty much everyone in the film does this to Cecilia at some point, even her sister and her friend. This film is a reminder that just because we can't see the people around us being abused, that doesn't mean it isn't happening.