The Invisible

The Invisible is a 2007 Foreign Remake of the Swedish film Den Osynlige starring Justin Chatwin and Margarita Levieva: Nick Powell, rich and bored and almost done with high school, hates his life. His mother has his career all planned out for him, but he would rather run away to London and study creative writing - he's even bought a plane ticket. Meanwhile, his best friend Pete owes a debt to thief and gang leader Annie Newton. When someone sells Annie out, she suspects Pete, who decides to pin it on Nick, thinking that Nick has already left for London. Except Nick's decided not to go...

We see Annie and her thugs beat the living tar out of Nick (it doesn't help that Nick takes the opportunity to taunt Annie's "brokenness"). We watch it get out of hand. We see Annie and her thugs leave him for dead in a sewer. And then, next morning, we see Nick walking down the road into town, not a scratch on him, and wondering why nobody can see him...

Not so much a mystery or a thriller as a beautifully shot character piece, all mists and gray skies of the Pacific Northwest, with cruelly effective imagine spots, Character Development and a Bittersweet Ending.

"Principle Whitcliff: Does anybody want to explain what happened? Nick: She finds me irresistible?"
 * Action Girl: Annie has no problem using a gun.
 * Animal Motifs: Birds. Annie's a Broken Bird, Nick during a scene involving a sparrow, and the final scene has Victor with a bird on his shirt.
 * Ate His Gun: Nick (almost) in his dream.
 * Berserk Button: Nick might have walked away with a cracked rib or two if he hadn't kept calling Annie "broken".
 * Black Humor: Nick's (kind-of second) suicide attempt dream. Admit it, you laughed.
 * Bittersweet Ending: See Redemption Equals Death.
 * Broken Bird: Annie, and calling her that name is her Berserk Button.
 * Children Are Innocent: Victor, Annie's little brother.
 * Cool Car: Annie's gorgeous black muscle car.
 * Dawson Casting: Chatwin, age 25, and Levieva, age 27, as high school seniors.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Both Annie and Nick. After a fight:


 * Determinator: While it's true that stomach wounds don't kill right away,
 * Foreign Remake: To "Den Osynlige"
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Finn Hudson is criticizing Nick's poem? Makes sense why he didn't get it.
 * Also, Goku is in a ghostly state? Sounds familiar
 * I See Dead People: After a while, Nick realizes that Annie can hear him.
 * Imagine Spot: Done very creepily with the way Nick imagines doing things, and then realizes he's affected nothing.
 * Invisible to Normals: Nick is invisible to everyone, and his presence can only (barely, and not consistently it seems) be felt by Annie. And animals.
 * Lonely Rich Kid: Nick.
 * My God, What Have I Done?: Annie, after realizing she may have just killed Nick.
 * Not So Different: Nick and Annie are both broken, just in different ways.
 * Not So Stoic: Nick's mother, when she breaks down at her desk. It finally gets through to Nick how much pain she's been through.
 * : Nick realizes this in a wonderful little scene with a bird.


 * Parental Abandonment: Annie's mother is dead, Nick's father is dead, and Nick's mother has shut herself off emotionally from her son.
 * Pet the Dog: The first time Nick sees Annie doing this, he's furious that she's "act[ing] human."
 * Redemption Equals Death:
 * Shower Scene: Annie
 * Trailers Always Spoil: A certain trailer included a strange old man that revealed to Nick (and the audience) that . The kicker? Annoyingly, this character was cut out of the movie!