Typically,
movie invisibility comes in two flavors: would be world-dominating mad
scientists and girls’ locker room hijinks. However, for Bob Langmore, it is a
brutal curse. Consider the difficulties of day-to-day hygiene when parts of
your body are turning invisible. Langmore left his wife and daughter to spare
them the partial sight of him, but he will return fully bundled when the latter
goes missing in Geoff Redknap’s The
Unseen (trailer
here),
which screens during the 2016 Fantasia International Film Festival.
Once
a promising NHL rookie, Langmore now punches the clock in a dilapidated
Canadian mill, where protective clothing and head gear is required at all
times. He is very sick, but he hides it with his abrasive personality. He is
contemplating disappearing for good and final, but first he wants to see his
daughter Eva one more time. Crisby, the local coke dealer will finance his road
trip if he does a bit of courier work while he is in the big city. The whole
thing smells like a set-up, but what does he care?
Inconveniently,
suicide or death-by-drug dealer will have to wait for Langmore when Eva
disappears under strange circumstances. She happened to be trespassing in the
old sanitarium where her grandfather was once a patient. The increasingly transparent
Langmore can barely stand upright, but he still has a hockey player’s fighting
instincts, so he duly springs into action.
Unseen has a gritty, blue-collar
sensibility that you rarely find so completely free of condescension in genre
films. It is also very much a film about forgiveness and understanding. The
Langmore family is definitely a mess, but the relationships that emerge are surprisingly
poignant. Aden Young has a Viggo Mortensen sort of thing going on, except you
can see the inside of his head. Julia Sarah Stone convincingly portrays Eva’s
development from resentful punk to mature adult. Camille Sullivan also adds
further humanist dimensions as Darlene, possibly the most sympathetic ex-wife
in the history of cinema.