THE INVISIBLE

-By Frank Lovece

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Nicholas Powell (Justin Chatwin) is, like in the old song, a teen angel. A cute, emo high-school senior who writes poems, is best friends with a goodhearted misfit and is the apple of his mom's eye, he finds himself becoming an all-too-literal teen angel in this clumsy bit of preposterousness. Unscreened for critics, The Invisible is a remake of a heart-rending 2002 Swedish film based on a young-adult novel.

Nick gets into his predicament through unfair chance. A local tough girl, Annie Newton (the promising Margarita Levieva), is extorting his best friend, Pete (Chris Marquette), with the help of her two goons (Ryan Kennedy, Andrew Francis). Since Nick's widowed mother (Marcia Gay Harden) is pretty well off and Nick has a thriving business writing school reports for classmates, he volunteers to pay her off, for Pete's sake. A condescending remark leads to her jumping him and being suspended for the rest of the day. Annie does a smash-and-grab at a jewelry store that night with her friend-with-benefits cohort, tattooed parolee Marcus (Alex O'Loughlin). He squeals on her to the cops the next day when she doesn't leave him the loot. Annie, who has reason to think Nick narc'd, ambushes Nick with her henchmen and, in a fit of class envy, the projects-dwelling ragamuffin stomps on the downed Nick's head with her heavy boots. Thinking that she's accidentally killed him, they hide the body beneath a manhole in the woods.

The fact that Annie is released from jail, despite her parents never showing up to post bail, gets at least a cursory explanation in that the arresting detective (the dependably real Callum Keith Rennie) was friends with her ex-cop dad and has known her since infanthood. More unconvincing, when police search the woods for Nick, they don't follow standard procedure or even basic common sense and get a city blueprint of sewers and such in the area. That's just one of the many, many bits of sloppy, unexplained plotting that inflict this movie directed but not written by comic-book screenwriter David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, the Blade films).

Nick, however, is not dead yet, and his soul walks around town, invisible to all except animals and unable to communicate with anyone unless they're seriously wounded or dying. In one clever conceit taken from the Swedish film, Nick initially appears to be able to interact with the world, but after a moment, we see that his tossing books around or throwing Annie off a roof is just wish fulfillment. The internal logic isn't always so consistent: In one shot involving Nick, Annie and a wall, Goyer can't decide whether Nick can pass through it ghostlike or not, and sets the frame to imply it without actually committing to the notion. That's either inept directing or vague and muddled thinking--two terms that both apply to this disappointing picture.