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 reality- based 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.”

NEXT
BECOMING INVISIBLE:
CASTING THE FILM’S WIDE RANGE OF CHARACTERS
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.