This Americanized re-telling of the Swedish chiller-hit "Den Osynlige" certainly isn't a bad film, but it sadly is just a tad bit too sentimental and unmemorable. The film describes itself perfectly as "Ghost" meets "The O.C." The plot deals with supernatural themes and sincere human emotions, while the characters (and especially the soundtrack) seem to come straight out of a pretentious high-school TV series. The protagonists are all beautiful and spoilt teenagers, so it's pretty difficult to believe they're dealing with life-altering issues like murder, poetry and spiritual redemption. But nonetheless "The Invisible" remains an occasionally very engaging and fast-paced thriller, admirably translated to the screen by genre-expert David S. Goyer. Nick Powell is a popular high-school student who lives alone with his overly protective mother ever since his father passed away. When the local troubled girl Annie and her gang of youthful thugs wrongfully assume Nick told the cops about Annie's involvement in a jewelry theft, they beat him up badly and leave him for for dead in the woods. Slowly approaching the light at the end of the tunnel, Nick returns as an invisible spirit and painfully witnesses how the police investigation regarding his disappearance evolves extremely slow and frustratingly. His last and only chance is to somehow get into contact with Annie and convince her to correct her mistake with a good deed. David S. Goyer attempts – fairly successfully, I may add – to add as few fancy special effects and false scares as possible and puts the emphasis on the characters and the atmosphere. The characters of Nick and Annie clearly gain maturity throughout the story and by the end of the film, they evolved from annoying teenage brats to ... LESS annoying teenage brats. The handful of sub plots, especially the one focusing on Nick and his mother, are rather redundant and only make the wholesome even more irksome. The performances are pretty good, though. Justin Chatwin ("Taking Lives") and Margarita Levieva are terrific and actually manage to make their implausible characters convincing and at least a bit likable near the end. The obtrusive moral of the story as well as the overly melodramatic twists when reaching the film's finale are a bit difficult to cope with – especially if you're primarily a fan of horror and thrillers – but I bet other types of audiences will have tears when walking out of the theater. "The Invisible" has the same producers as "The Sixth Sense" and definitely also shares ideas and plot-aspects with that occult thriller hit. The little kid in the former saw dead people who didn't really realize they crossed the line to the other side, whereas Nick damn well realizes he's dead but there's nobody who sees him. Decent film, at least worth one viewing.

I really shouldn't get this emotionally involved, but I was angry when I saw this film. This is not the film I wanted to see when the trailer broke last October. There it was in big grandiose lettering, "From the producer of Sixth Sense and the co-writer of Batman Returns." How could you not be intrigued with this team? I was lead to believe this was going to be a murder mystery about some guy trying to find out who killed him and how he was running out of time to solve that mystery. In the trailer he encounters some old man in a hospital or something, who explains to our protagonist that if he can solve the mystery of his own death, then he will come back to life. I was excited to see this movie. It was supposed to come out at around Christmas. Then something strange happened. Instead of launching it at the lucrative Christmas season, the inconspicuously and clandestinely delayed the film for four months. Instead they dumped it into theaters one week before Spiderman 3 came out and they edited the hell out of it. No longer did you have a film about a teen trying solve his own murder, you simply had a film about some kid who gets murdered. That's it. Nothing else. From there, while in ghost limbo, he follows around his murderer. Not the two male thugs who helped perpetuate the murder, but the "mysteriously" hot chick who kicks him to death. You see, she has a dark past. She is ignored and possibly abused at home. So naturally she decides the best way to compensate for this is to beat up guys twice her weight and then of course kill them. Because, you know, that's what normal disturbed kids do. They kill people. And this is just the beginning. Because now we have the "good guy" following his own murderer, and get this, once he sees her take off her hat and dance at an "E" club, she becomes illuminated to him. And then he decides that she isn't such a bad girl after all. Of course. This is the girl that KILLED YOU and because she has a nice rack, is nice to her baby brother and has had a few unfortunate bad breaks in life, you fall for her. And then at the end of the movie, it actually wants us to believe that she is the only one that can save him. She must go to his hospital room and sit next to him and then will him back to life. SIGH! The problem with this film is that it suffers from a lack of everything. It doesn't make sense and I think that is the studios fault. Maybe they screened the film for an audience and they didn't like the direction the film was going. So instead of tweaking it, they butchered it. They took the Sixth Sense element out of it and what you have left is a Steven Seagal movie with a ghost. I want to watch the movie I saw in the trailer. Where is that movie? It's out there somewhere. It has to be. They edited it to make is something terrible. How terrible.

Here are some other terrible plot points. After the guy is murdered, his best friend, who is also at the scene, doesn't go to the cops. He is too afraid of this 5'2, 98 pound girl. He just lets his best friend rot at the bottom of a sewer or something. I mean, where is the logic in this film. AT one point, it looked like they were going to introduce a twit where his best friend might have been involved. But even that went nowhere. There are literally a half dozen more plot points that were just silly beyond belief. I really struggle to understand how shoddy writing like this is allowed in Hollywood.

This film could have been so much more. The idea and concept and original trailer were very well done. The film is not.

3/10

When I saw the rating on IMDb, I wasn't too interested in seeing The Inivisible due to that, not only that, but the trailer didn't seem that interesting as well. But I had a free rental and there wasn't anything else that caught my eye and I just figured to go ahead and give this movie a look. I watched it tonite and I don't understand why there is only a 6.0 rating, I think it should be in the high 6.0 or low 7.0, I've just seen so many worse films that for some reason get a good rating on this website. Trust me, The Invisible is one this year's surprises. The plot is like a new version of Ghost, a little bit of a twist, where we show the ultimate killer, your conscience. When you do something wrong, could you stay strong enough to keep it a secret? That's what The Invisible is about.

Nick is a success at school, he gets awesome grades and has lots of friends, he's going places in his future. But when his "best friend" sells him out to a troubled girl, Annie, and puts him in a situation that has nothing to do with him, Annie takes the situation to an ultimate low and almost kills Nick. She hides his body, but Nick is still alive and his spirit is begging her to help him, she's the only one that can hear him, but his time is running out and she's having a hard time dealing with the harsh consequences.

The Invisible was a good film, I would highly recommend it. I thought that it was done well and the story was really good. The girl who played Annie was absolutely a perfect cast, I hope to see her in more movies in the future, her performance as Annie was terrific, she doesn't over do the self pity or under do it, she's just right on with the character. Her last scene with Nick actually made me cry, it was so selfless the way these two played it, their chemistry was perfect. I really liked the Invisible, hopefully people will give this movie a better chance, it deserves it.

7/10