Tagline: Life, death and something in between.
From the producers of “The Sixth Sense” and the co-writer of “Batman Begins,” “The Invisible” is a supernatural thriller about a writer who finds himself trapped between the world of the living and the dead-completely invisible to the living.
Nick (Justin Chatwin) has a bright future until he is brutally attacked and left for dead. Now in limbo, his only chance to live again is to figure out the mystery of what happened to him and why, before his time runs out. But how do you solve a murder, when the victim is you?
From the studio that brought you “The Sixth Sense,” “The Invisible” is a supernatural thriller about a teenager who finds himself trapped between the worlds of the living and the deceased. Nick (Justin Chatwin), is a high school senior with a bright future until, in a tragic case of mistaken identity, he is brutally attacked by a troubled girl, Annie (Margarita Levieva), and his body is left for dead.
Now in limbo, not quite dead but invisible to the living, his spirit can only watch as his mother (Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden) and the police search frantically for him, unaware that he is only hours away from truly perishing.
Solving the Mystery of Your Own Death
No one can see him, no one can hear him, no one, not even his best friends, seems to know he is there. This is the situation Nick Powell finds himself in one morning when he arrives at school. Nick has become invisible to the world and, indeed, he will soon come to realize that his very existence is in question.
The victim of a terrible crime, Nick is caught in the mysterious, unseen spaces between life and death. Now, his only hope of returning to his life is to become an ethereal detective on the trail of his own murderer, to try to piece together the puzzle of where his near-lifeless body is and how he got there—but, as it turns out, the one person who can help him do that needs saving herself.
This provocative, imagination-sparking concept drives THE INVISIBLE, the new film from director David Goyer, who turns from the action thrills of “Blade” and “Batman Begins” to a story cut through with ghostly mystery, emotional drama and taut suspense.
The story of THE INVISIBLE first came to the fore in an acclaimed Swedish thriller celebrated for its original and moving twist on the fantasy genre. When producers Neal Edelstein and Mike Macari—who had earlier brought the seminal Japanese horror film “The Ring” to American audiences—first encountered the Swedish film, they had their own premonition that it would make for an equally exciting Hollywood production. Edelstein and Macari quickly attained the rights from the film’s Scottish screenwriter, Mick Davis, who had written the original screenplay in English, which was then translated into Swedish.
When they took the story to Spyglass producers Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Jonathan Glickman, the material proved irresistible to the veteran hit-makers. Having previously produced “The Sixth Sense,” the modern classic that ushered in a whole new era of smart supernatural thrillers in its wake, they knew they had found the kind of story that keeps people on the edges of their seats and awake at night, a story of fantastical events driven by characters who feel entirely real.
“THE INVISIBLE is a supernatural thriller, but it’s also a love story and an intriguing mystery that comes to life through a group of very strong, well-drawn characters,” says Barber. “It’s rare to come across such great writing in such a chilling story.”
Adds Birnbaum: “The story grabs you because the characters are so interesting and multilayered—and because there are surprises at every turn.”
Concludes Glickman: “At Spyglass, we are drawn to all different kinds of movies, as long as they tell great stories, and THE INVISIBLE was a story that we all responded to enthusiastically. The film is frightening and exciting but the fears it explores are so realitybased that we felt it had great potential in the hands of a talented director.”
Meanwhile, in a perfect twist of fate, just such a filmmaker was independently seeking the rights to THE INVISIBLE. This was David Goyer, the screenwriter and director who has quickly become one of the hottest fantasy-film talents in Hollywood, with a penchant for creative, complex material. After rising to prominence with the action-packed hit “Blade” series as both a writer and director, he made his mark co-writing the critically praised screenplay for “Batman Begins,” rethinking the beloved superhero in exciting and surprisingly moving ways.
Coming into the project at the earliest stages, Goyer brought to THE INVISIBLE his own original vision of how to tell the story of Nick Powell’s life through the lens of Nick Powell’s death. He viewed the story as being not just about Nick’s fight to return to the living but also about Annie, who, haunted by Nick in more ways than one, begins to find her own salvation.
“I saw the film starting out as a supernatural thriller, but then gradually evolving into a redemptive love story,” Goyer says. “I envisioned a movie that wouldn’t necessarily follow the standard Hollywood conventions, a film that is woven through with all kinds of subtle themes, and that interested me.”
Also intriguing to Goyer was the concept at the very core of the story: invisibility. While Nick is literally invisible, Goyer notes that other characters—including Annie, Nick’s best friend, Pete, and Nick’s mother, Diane—all feel metaphorically invisible to others, who don’t seem able to see who they really are.
“Playing with the whole idea of invisibility appealed to me,” says Goyer. “Being invisible, first of all, is a tremendous allegory for adolescence and growing up—because it’s a time when you truly feel like nobody really sees or hears you. Nick is not only invisible but a kind of a ghost who is trapped in this privileged place where he can do something we all fantasize about—be a total voyeur, listening in on his friends’ and family’s most private conversations.
Watching from this other space, he catches all the characters with their masks down and sees sides of them that nobody else ever sees. It happens with his mother, with his friend Pete and especially with Annie. And that builds on one of the story’s biggest themes, which is that people tend to wear all these masks that keep others from seeing them for who they truly are.”
While Goyer’s experiences on “Blade” and “Batman Begins” had taught him a lot about how to deftly handle the mix of suspense, emotion and dramatic surprises, for this film, he also envisioned a different kind of style—one that would be more understated with all the emphasis on the reality of the characters and visceral action, with only a few key visual effects.
“The main idea was that I wanted the film to feel entirely real and naturalistic, to have a strong verisimilitude, which would belie the eerie events that are taking placing within it,” the director notes. “The visual effects almost entirely involve Nick’s invisibility—but not in the classic H.G. Wells sense. Instead, we focused on Nick’s inability to affect the material world around him. I think these are the best kind of visual effects, the kind that feel seamless, where the audience is unaware that any kind of effect is actually happening.”
When Goyer passionately presented his ideas to the film’s producing team, it was clear that a match had been made. “David understood the material to its core,” notes Edelstein. “He understood that inside the story’s thrilling, action-oriented elements, it is fundamentally character-driven and examines key aspects of the human condition—and he knew how to pull this mix off. His vision was completely in sync with what all of the producers had hoped to find.”
Adds Macari: “A big part of the movie is the concept of personal redemption. You have a character who was killed by someone who looks like the villain of the story but is transformed into a protagonist you care about. It’s difficult to pull that off emotionally, but it’s something David Goyer was able to bring to the film.”
Becoming Invisible
With production moving rapidly ahead, David Goyer was well aware that everything would now hinge on finding the right cast to give THE INVISIBLE that feeling of fear-inducing reality. First, he would set out on a search to find a young actor capable of taking on the movie’s challenging central character: Nick, a bright young man who seems to have it all—looks, brains, money, grades and girlfriends—yet is still feeling lost and is just about to give up on himself. Nick only begins to realize what his life is worth through the transformational experience of what it is to be dead.
Because the character spends so much of the film in the limbo between the living and the dead, and thus invisible to the rest of the characters, Goyer knew he would need to find an actor daring enough to try something different and charismatic enough to bring an emotional charge even to non-verbal scenes. After an extensive search, the filmmakers came upon Justin Chatwin, a Canadian native who had recently come to the attention of audiences by playing Tom Cruise’s son in “War of the Worlds.”
After meeting with Chatwin, Goyer was convinced he had everything it would take, from his boyish charm to his strong work ethic, to do the role justice. “Justin has a look, a personality and an attitude that absolutely pops on the screen,” observes Goyer. “The camera just loves him. It’s a tough task to play a character who has to react to everything happening around him without playing off of the other actors or having them be able to react to him.”
Adds Mike Macari: “Justin has to carry this invisibility through most of the film, yet he still keeps you completely engaged. There’s very few actors his age who I think could accomplish what he’s done in such a compelling way.”
For his part, Chatwin was instantly drawn to the role’s depth and complexity, which gave him a lot to chew on as he prepared for his performance. “What I loved about the script is that it’s about all these polar opposites—life and death, love and hate—and also about the idea that when you think something is black or white, you might suddenly find that there’s gray to it.
It also is very realistic about youth and adults and the lines that separate the two,” he says. As for playing a character who is literally invisible, Chatwin could at first relate on the most basic level. “I think a lot of kids growing up feel invisible to the world around them,” he says. But as he got deeper into it, he found the experience of operating in the world as a ghost even more profound. “It put me in a realm where I was constantly asking myself questions like ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What am I?’ so I got to explore those questions the same as my character does,” he explains. “It was definitely hard and sometimes frustrating to play a part where no one is talking to you or even looking at you—but it was a really interesting challenge.”
Chatwin was already a fan of Goyer’s “Blade” and “Batman Begins,” so that became another draw for the young star. “One of the things I was really looking forward to was working with David Goyer, because I already knew he had such great visual talent. Anyone who could bring a fantasy idea like Batman to life I knew would be able to take this story and really make audiences believe in it,” he comments.
As Nick learns to navigate as an undetectable ghost, he finds himself trying to reach out to one of the living—and perhaps the most unlikely person of all: Annie, Nick’s seemingly toughas-nails schoolmate who is implicated in his disappearance. As with Nick, the role of Annie would require an unusual set of skills for a young actress. Whoever they cast would have to be able to pull off Annie’s seething, villainous exterior while also revealing her inner vulnerability and potential for redemption. She would have to be able to flip the audience’s feelings from hatred to sympathy.
The plum role was sought after by many, yet after auditioning dozens upon dozens of Hollywood’s leading young actresses, the filmmakers had yet to see the qualities they were seeking. Then, newcomer Margarita Levieva came in and blew them away. Recalls Mike Macari, “The minute Margarita came in the room, you believed she was dangerous and that she could actually hurt you, yet when she did a tender scene, you were completely with her emotionally. She was a godsend. Annie is such a tough role, yet you instantly buy into Margarita and believe in her.”
David Goyer continues: “I was getting depressed because I just didn’t think we were ever going to find Annie, and I remember my casting director saying, ‘Don’t worry, she’ll just walk in the door’ and literally the next person who walked in was Margarita, this virtual unknown.
By the end of her audition, I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s her.’ And from that moment onward, we didn’t even really consider anyone else. I was so convinced that she was the one that I cancelled the other screen tests.”
Goyer continues: “Margarita has to make an incredible transition from this feral girl who seems completely irredeemable and vicious to someone who you feel conflicted about, someone who has been hurt by life and isn’t at all black and white. It’s an extremely complex role with many layers. Annie does this horrible act, but then you start to see her home life, which is awful, and how she’s caring for her younger brother, and all these things. You want to hate this person, but you can’t. And then progressively, as the story unfolds, she ends up actually redeeming herself. Margarita handled it all so beautifully. She’s going to be a huge star.”
Also key was that Justin Chatwin immediately found an intense chemistry with Margarita, volatile though it may be. “From day one, she was very hungry and ready to go,” Justin says. “We bounced off each other a lot on the set and I really felt connected to her. David found somebody who truly has that kind of fierce wild child in her. I enjoyed just watching Margarita because she was so on the edge.”
Levieva, a former gymnast who moved to New York from her native Russia when she was 11, was thrilled at the opportunity to make her screen debut in such a strong and unique role. I feel so lucky and grateful to have had this chance to play a character that is so deep, so diverse and complex,” Levieva says. Last year, she was seen in the ensemble television drama “Vanished.”
Despite Annie’s sheer brutality early in the film, Levieva found she could relate to the character’s inner struggle. “Like Nick, Annie just wants to be visible to the world,” she says. “To be just 18 and so broken and so hurt and so lost in so many ways, I think she feels like nobody really understands who she is.”
She continues: “What’s really interesting is that Annie seems like she’s the dark, evil force you need to stay away from and Nick seems like he’s the perfectly lovable, good, innocent guy, but in a way, they’re both coming from the same place. They’ve both been hurt, they both feel like outcasts, and they both have a different way of seeing the world—and because of that, they are able to ultimately see each other.”
If Nick’s opinion of Annie undergoes a dramatic shift after he gets the chance to observe her from his undetectable vantage point, so, too, does his view of his best friend, Pete, who finds himself torn between his own overwhelming fears and doing the right thing to help save Nick’s life.
To play Pete, David Goyer chose Chris Marquette, a rising young star who has won legions of young fans in his role on television’s “Joan of Arcadia” and is now coming to the fore in feature films. Establishing the loyal but unequal relationship between Nick and Pete was key to the intricacies of the story. “Nick is the one who always gets the girl, always the good grades and Pete has been kind of a hanger-on in the shadow of this golden boy,” explains Goyer. “But it is Pete’s cowardice that sets in motion all the events that lead to Nick’s potential death. I thought Chris was amazing in the role. He reminds me a lot of Sal Mineo in the James Dean film ‘Rebel Without a Cause.’ He plays this sad, wounded soul so beautifully.”
Justin Chatwin so enjoyed working with Marquette that the two developed a friendship that added further layers of realism to their on-screen relationship. “Chris was great,” says Chatwin. He really digs deeply into the characters he plays, and right from day one, we clicked. Chris and I had mutual friends in common, and I had always wanted to do a movie with him. We just had fun in every scene that we worked together in.”
Marquette was immediately attracted to the screenplay’s nuanced depiction of teen lives inside a harrowing tale of suspense. “I thought the story was really unique, and I also felt there were a lot of truths in the characters,” Chris says. “To take a concept that’s so out of this world, where you have this otherworldly character wandering around, and then to find a lot of reality and truth in it was really interesting to me.”
Still, Marquette admits it was difficult to play out Pete’s tragedy. “Pete is a weak person,” he explains. “Nick tells Pete that he has to learn to stand up for himself, to hold his ground, but Pete doesn’t quite know how to do it because he’s so scared all the time. He’s constantly letting himself be pushed around and told what to do, and all of the sudden, it erupts into this terrible situation he never thought he could be in.”
Helping to create that terrifying situation is the character of Marcus, Annie’s criminal boyfriend, who is played with resonating menace by Alex O’Loughlin, an up-and-coming Australian actor who came to global notice as one of the four finalists for the role of James Bond. He recently made his feature-film debut in the sci-fi thriller “Man Thing,” based on the Marvel comic book, and will join the cast of “The Shield” in 2007.
O’Loughlin was intrigued by Marcus’ intense relationship with Annie. “He’s obsessed with her, even though she’s no good for him,” he observes. “I mean Marcus is no angel. He’s well on his way to becoming a career criminal—but there’s a million reasons why he should walk away from Annie, and he can’t because he’s bewitched by her.”
In playing Marcus, O’Loughlin especially enjoyed working so closely with Margarita Levieva. “She’s an incredibly instinctual actress,” he says. “The minute the cameras are rolling, she’s there, living in the moment.”
In another casting coup, the filmmakers were thrilled to bring Marcia Gay Harden on board as Nick’s mother, Diane—adding an Academy Award-winning actress to THE INVISIBLE’s roster of young stars. Working with Harden was especially exciting for David Goyer. “She’s the most talented actor I’ve worked with,” he states. “She can turn from one emotion to the next like a switch going on and off. In any other hands, Diane might have come across as the clichéd mother who doesn’t understand her son, but the whole point of the film is that all these characters are invisible to each other, and Nick sees that when her mask is down, that she really does love him—and Marcia makes that so real.”
Justin Chatwin was also pleased to have the chance to work so closely with one of today’s most-acclaimed screen actresses. “One of the things that Nick comes to see in his invisibility is that his mother is not the heartless person he thinks she is—she has real feelings,” he observes. “I loved working with Marcia because she’s so experienced, and I’m always interested in how other actors get to that place and their approach. Marcia is such a fine-tuned actress—she can be subtle and funny and moving at the same time.”
Marcia Gay Harden was equally impressed with Chatwin. “He has a kind of classic film face that you can project a lot onto, and I think you identify with him,” she says. “He is a young actor who is willing to try anything. He just wanted to dive into the character. And in the process, you can get a lot of really wonderful and unusual choices.”
She was also drawn to the screenplay. “It’s a psychological drama to a degree, and it’s certainly also a ticking-clock story, where a crime has to be solved before time runs out, which makes for a really exciting movie,” she says. “But what also interested me is that there is a real undercurrent in terms of what the characters come to understand about themselves—what this mother comes to understand, and what this boy and girl each come to understand about who they are and about what they have been missing in their lives.”
Most of all Harden was especially pleased with the ways in which David Goyer translated both the thrills and depth of the story to the screen. “David and his visual team brought a beautiful starkness to the movie,” she says. “The shots they chose turned out to be so much more interesting than the ones I imagined in my head.”
The Look of the Invisible: About the Film’s Design
On the set of THE INVISIBLE, David Goyer continued to be driven by character. He knew that each location, each shot, the look of each particular set would help to build the film’s dramatic tension—and unravel the mystery facing Nick Powell. To accomplish all this, he collaborated closely with an accomplished crew that included cinematographer Gabriel Beristain, production designer Carlos Barbosa and costume designer Tish Monaghan.
Goyer had worked with the prolific Beristain, one of Hollywood’s leading cinematographers, on “Blade II” and “Blade: Trinity,” and the two were already good friends with their own distinctive—and boisterous—creative relationship. “Gabby’s a great character,” Goyer confides. “He’s kind of bigger than life. We have this great symbiotic relationship together. We fight like husband and wife all the time, we’re very loud and bellicose—but the crew finds these antics pretty amusing, once they’ve figured out that we’re actually teasing each other.”
Beristain could not resist reuniting with Goyer. “Working with David always makes things interesting—it’s a very unique and creative process,” he laughs, “and I also thought the story was terrific.”
In developing the photographic look of the film, Goyer knew that he wanted an emphasis on intimate interiors and natural exteriors with strong lighting and a sense of stark realism. To find just the right look, Goyer and Beristain watched a number of films and flipped through art books together for inspiration. Recalls Goyer: “I started to veer towards the look of the Dutch masters, like Vermeer or Lievens, with that kind of strong unidirectional lighting. I was influenced by those paintings where you have figures standing in front of windows, and the only lighting comes from one side, washing over the people.”
He continues: “Gabby and I discussed shooting the film this way. I told him I wanted most of the shots in the film to be moving, but with very subtle, gentle moves—and that’s exactly what he replicated. We came up with a lot of shots where the actors are situated next to windows, with the only source of light coming from one direction, so that half of their face is lit and the other half dropping into darkness.”
Beristain was invigorated by the challenges of THE INVISIBLE, which involved switching between cramped interior rooms and expansive outdoor locales—all on location in Vancouver, British Columbia. Filming the exterior scenes during the Vancouver winter, under rainy, foggy and often changeable skies, frequently called for savvy technological solutions on the part of Beristain. “I had to pull out my bag of tricks on this film,” admits Beristain.
The cinematographer especially enjoyed shooting such new talents as Justin Chatwin and Margarita Levieva. “If I could describe them in a word, I’d say freshness. They have that capacity to surprise—to surprise the audience and themselves. They really get the idea of film storytelling, and they give you wonderful things for the camera,” he says. “Great filmmakers like David Goyer use the camera as a kind of character within the storytelling process.
Margarita and Justin saw that and embraced it and played with it.” Equally key to the film’s atmosphere is the work of production designer Carlos Barbosa, who designed each individual location to mirror the personality and psychology of the film’s characters. He began with Nick Powell’s house.
“We wanted to create this very beautiful, protected, high-class environment that would reflect that Nick seems to have it all—yet also reveals that he and his mother have had a breakdown in communication. So we created a super-modern house with everything in its place, not a dirty dish anywhere, but one that feels totally controlled and rigid. The only breathing room at all in the house is Nick’s bedroom. It begins to make sense that Nick would want to break out of this perfect, meticulous environment, to find his own voice,” he explains.
To stand in for the Powells’ house, Barbosa used a sleek, modernist home designed by one of Canada’s foremost architects, Arthur Erickson. A marvel of layered concrete and glass shrouded in spectacular landscaping, the house features a natural duck pond visible from all the rooms. “I loved the house and thought it was beautiful—and all the concrete, glass and wood provide a lot of visual texture,” adds Barbosa.
Meanwhile for Annie, Barbosa made a study in contrasts, recreating her living space in a cramped, cluttered apartment in a rundown building. “Annie is the very opposite of Nick, so we decided to set her in a housing project,” he says. “It’s still modern in terms of the ’60s-style architecture but it couldn’t be a more different environment from that of Justin’s character. She and her family live in a very chaotic, messy world.”
To create some of the film’s key sets in Nick’s high school, where a significant part of the action takes place, Barbosa wanted a location that would avoid the cliché 1950s school look with institutional, locker-lined hallways. “We wanted to present a totally different-looking world for the film,” he notes, “one that’s a lot more modern with interesting spaces and minimalist architecture.”
A wide search turned up a rare example of a newly constructed, modernist high school located in nearby Burnaby, a Vancouver suburb. “We found this very state-of-the-art school with super-edgy, clean architecture and a beautiful surrounding environment,” says Barbosa. “It gives the impression that this is primarily a very wealthy school, where many of the kids would have the money to buy Nick’s essays and Annie’s stolen goods.”
Another vital visual element of the film are the many high-wire stunts which are woven into the fabric of the story, which include a jump into the frigid and dangerously turbulent waters under a dam, a leap off a 15-story building and a visceral car accident. Goyer likes his actors to do as many of their own stunts as they are able, and he found Justin Chatwin and Margarita Levieva more than willing.
The scenes shot at the Ruskin Dam in Mission, British Columbia, about an hour outside of Vancouver, involved some especially tricky maneuvering. The main location, a small patch of rocky land jutting into the river under the powerful dam, was accessible only by boat. Not only that, but safety concerns by the hydrological authority in charge of the area meant that only a minimal crew, actors, stunt and safety people could be ferried across the water, along with camera and equipment. Once there, both Justin Chatwin and the stunt divers had to spend many chilly hours in the icy river.
As Justin explains, it was not his favorite part of the filming process, and for good reason. “I’m allergic to wetsuit material, so I couldn’t wear one,” he says. “It was pretty cold out there but the shots turned out great, so ultimately, I was happy. There was a lot of hard physical stuff in this movie, all the running to find my body, all the freezing in the water—but it was also fun. Ironically, it made me feel very alive.”
Another key sequence in the story has Nick getting hit by a car. For this scene, Chatwin had to fall repeatedly on a green-screen mat in front of the vehicle—but he did have some previous experience in this unusual art. “This is the third film where I’ve been involved in a car crash,” Chatwin notes. “Maybe it’s my destiny.”
There was also considerable strenuous physical activity involved for Margarita Levieva’s character, Annie, including fight sequences, leaping over tables, attacking a jewelry store window and plenty of all-out running. Levieva, in excellent condition thanks to her former training as a competitive gymnast in Communist Russia, was keen to try all her own stunts. “When I first read the script, I didn’t even realize how demanding the role was going to be, but the physical action turned out to be very fun to do. I got to use a lot of the stuff that I learned as a gymnast on the set,” says Levieva.
For David Goyer, there was one more final element he’d always felt was central to his vision of THE INVISIBLE: the musical soundtrack, which Goyer uses as a non-visual mode to further deepen and enrich the film’s atmosphere and sense of the characters. Goyer knew he wanted a soundtrack that would stand out with a collection of mood-generating songs from today’s newest indie and alternative bands. Ultimately, he chose songs from a wide variety of artists, including British rockers Oceansize, the American genre busters Mellowdrone, New York City’s avant-garde vocal band TV On The Radio, Chicago’s Kill Hannah, the Canadian supergroup Broken Social Scene, the alt-metal band A Perfect Circle, the lush emo rockers Death Cab for Cutie and the poetic Birmingham, Alabama-based Remy Zero.
Also featured on the soundtrack is the rock quartet headed by actor Jared Leto, 30 Seconds to Mars, with their hit single “The Kill.” Their recent album, “Beautiful Lie,” went platinum and rocketed to #1 on the modern-rock charts.
Ultimately, the music, the stunts, the visual effects, the photography and design of the film would all be put in service of the story—helping to bring Nick Powell’s quest to get beyond the haunting secrets held by everyone around him fully to life. Sums up Mike Macari: “Between the screenplay, David Goyer, Spyglass, this amazing cast and our very creative crew, it was the perfect chemistry for telling this story.”
Production notes provided by Touchstone Pictures.
The Invisible
Starring: Marcia Gay Harden, Justin Chatwin, Margarita Levieva, Chris Marquette, Michelle Harrison
Directed by: David S. Goyer
Screenplay by: Christine Roum
Release Date: April 27th, 2007
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, criminality, sensuality and language – all involving teens.
Studio: Touchstone Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $20,578,909 (76.8%)
Foreign: $6,231,204 (23.2%)
Total: $26,810,113 (Worldwide)