‘THE Invisible” is a 12th-grade “Sixth Sense” with a third-rate plot.
It’s billed as a mystery about a high school senior turned ghost (Justin Chatwin, the kid from “War of the Worlds”) trying to solve his own murder. But the movie is actually about the struggle for redemption of a butt-kicking little girl the size of a Tater Tot (former Russian gymnast Margarita Levieva, and I believe this is the first movie ever to ask us to be scared of a gymnast) who is constantly stomping much larger men.
She thrashes her classmate and leaves him for dead (so there is no mystery), at which point he splits into two beings: one his almost-dead body, lying broken in a sewer, and the other a wraith who wanders around trying to guilt the girl into saving him.
The film is sensitively directed, full of emo songs and quiet little character moments. But even ghost stories aren’t allowed to be so ludicrous as to show a gut-shot character carrying on as if suffering from nothing worse than a mild wedgie, or a guy trying to drag his own body to safety.
THE INVISIBLE
Will vanish from the multiplex. Running time: 97 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence, criminality, profanity, all among teens). At the Lincoln Square, the 34th Street, the 19th Street East, others.
