The Invisible

Review in a Hurry:  After he's severely beaten and left out in the woods to die, cynical teen Nick (Justin Chatwin) starts seeing dead people—when he looks in the mirror. This surprisingly understated supernatural thriller is a cut above the usual WB-core claptrap.

The Bigger Picture:  Nick, a wannabe poet who can barely cover his disdain for his comfortable suburban life, shortly finds out that death isn't really any better. His existence as a ghost is maddeningly frustrating, as he's unable to interact with the world in any way, other than occasionally spooking a pigeon. This becomes more of a bummer when Nick realizes he's only mostly dead, and might survive if his body is found in time.

Meanwhile, the bad-seed girl who put him at death's door (Margarita Levieva) has her own problems—guilt, family issues, arrest warrants and the nagging suspicion that she's being haunted, which isn't doing much for her state of mind.

There are neither feverish scares nor murky mysteries here—everything is pretty much as it appears. Director David S. Goyer, who usually writes comic-book screenplays, displays a great deal of restraint, selling Nick's ghostliness with old-fashioned camera trickery rather than gaudy CGI effects.

While this would seem a recipe for a humdrum couple of hours, The Invisible has an engrossing deliberateness about it. You keep watching simply because you want to see what happens to people you've come to know, and maybe even sorta like. A teen-targeted thriller where the characters aren't transparent? Now I've seen everything.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  Okay, the existential-ghost-crisis thing is a little strained. What is this supposed to be, anyway, Igby Goes Six Feet Under? And though The Invisible is the kind of film you give some credit to early on, you do so in expectation of a reasonable payoff at the end. There isn't much of one here.