The Invisible Man is an excellent horror film packed with shocks and scares and with a fun ending which contains several twists. But it’s possible director Leigh Whannell might have intended to pull the rug out from under the viewer one last time, offering the opportunity for a very different alternative reading of what actually happens to Cecilia. In the ending we see onscreen, Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) escapes the institution she’s locked in, is cleared of killing her sister and is able to exact a fitting revenge on her abusive husband Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) with the help of her friend James (Aldis Hodge) who finally believes she was being tortured by her invisible ex. It’s a triumphant ending for Cecilia that’s pure wish fulfillment. But sometimes when something feels too good to be true that’s because it is. Over the years Whannell has proven that he knows his horror tropes and it’s possible he’s giving the audience the option to explore one last one. There’s a device found often in horror which we’ll call the “Owl Creek Bridge ending,” from the 1890 short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. This story, and its twist, has inspired a number of movies including Jacob’s Ladder and Carnival of Souls and influenced the ending of many more including The Descent and The Escapist. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” a man being executed by hanging from a bridge manages a death-defying escape when the rope snaps, dropping him into the river below. He frees his hands and swims to safety to embark on the long and increasingly strange journey back to his plantation where he looks forward to seeing his wife and family. But just as he arrives, there’s a loud noise, a flash of white, and then silence. His escape wasn’t death-defying after all but a final hallucination that occurred between him falling from the bridge and the rope snapping his neck and killing him. It’s a good story. And it may have influenced Whannell’s The Invisible Man. If The Invisible Man has an “Owl Creek Bridge” twist bubbling beneath the surface it surely comes at a major turning point in the film where Cecilia’s life is threatened. Specifically, the moment she slits her wrist while locked up in the facility. This is the point at which Cecilia is at rock bottom. No one believes her story, she’s been isolated from her support group by the invisible antics of her ex-husband Adrian (who everyone believes is dead), and when she tries to confide in her sister, in a public space for safety, invisible Adrian slits her sister’s throat there and then, making it look like Cecilia herself had done it. Now Cecilia is incarcerated, alone, and with little hope of ever being believed and no one left in her life she can talk to. The fact there are logic holes in Cecilia’s final hallucination don’t really matter – since it’s not real. It would explain why Tom would ever agree to essentially frame himself for murder and for kidnapping his brother by tying him up. He wouldn’t, but it’s a solution Cecilia can imagine. It would explain why the formerly incredibly clever and controlled Adrian, whose aim is to gaslight Cecilia, would allow his brother to go on a rampage that legitimizes her concerns, gets her off the hook for murder, and gives her back her support group in the form of James, the one person left in her life she can rely on. He probably wouldn’t do this either, but that is what Cecilia needs to happen to get her life back. It would certainly explain why she’s dressed to the nines in completely impractical killer heels when she takes revenge on Adrian: of course you’d look your best in your own revenge fantasy. Finally it would explain why after Cecilia “finds” Adrian dead she calls the police and just leaves the scene without waiting for them to arrive despite being all over the CCTV. Boring procedural stuff and giving witness statements isn’t the stuff of death throe hallucinations. This reading adds an extra tragic layer to a story that manages to talk about big issues in a fun, scary B-movie context. The literal ending, the one we see on screen, is satisfying – it’s a gift to Cecilia and to any victim who struggles to be believed, who wants true closure and to know they are finally truly safe. It allows her to be the hero in her own narrative. It’s the right ending.
