10 Genius Suspense Tricks That Made Horror Movies Great
9. Using Negative Space To Imply Adrian's Presence - The Invisible Man (2020)
Given that filmmaker Leigh Whannell had just $7 million to produce The Invisible Man, he was required to get creative and find low-budget solutions for depicting the surging anxiety of facing off against an invisible enemy.
Rather than spend most of the budget on complex VFX sequences, Whannell decided to make expert use of negative space - that is, keeping his camera lingering on seemingly empty spaces within the frame which are in fact, narratively speaking, occupied by Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) wearing an invisible bodysuit.
Even the most casual moviegoer will be subconsciously aware of the rules of cinematic language, namely that the camera follows subjects in the frame.
And so, when Whannell doesn't do that, but rather holds on these apparently empty spaces, we immediately know an unseeable entity is residing in the midst.
It's a frankly ingenious and very, very budget-friendly compositional trick to make the audience imagine something that can't be shown, and Whannell uses it extensively throughout The Invisible Man's runtime without it ever getting old.