Eighteen-year-old Nick Powell (Justin Chatwin) is a brilliant, clean-cut high school student on the threshold of great scholastic success. He also dabbles in petty crime, taking money for writing papers and taking tests for less gifted students, and saving up for a ticket to London, where he hopes to continue his studies. Through a friend, he runs afoul of his school’s tough girl, Annie (Margarita Levieva), who has just robbed a jewelry store while out on a date with her career-criminal boyfriend, Marcus (Alex O’Loughlin). She’s found out, and put on probation while she awaits trial.

To save his own ass, one of Nick’s friends lies, claiming that it was Nick who fingered Annie, who then tracks him down. Annie and her crew of juvie thugs beat Nick to a pulp and leave him for dead. Nick’s spirit, now barely attached to his battered body, is released to wander the halls of his school and the byways of his town, trying to make himself heard by someone who could then find his body and save his life. And the only person who can see or hear him is Annie.

But while Nick’s spirit is invisible to everyone else, he and Annie have suffered a different sort of invisibility for some time. Nick’s mother, Diane (Marcia Gay Harden), still in shock and grief at her husband’s death, pays no attention to Nick’s wants and needs. Annie’s parents are too busy fighting and watching TV to pay attention to someone they consider a nuisance.

But teen alienation and bad parenting are hardly new subjects of concern -- though based on the Swedish film Den Osynlige (The Invisible), itself based on the novel of that title by Mats Wahl, the high concept of The Invisible is identical to that of Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Unfortunately, the trailers for The Invisible portray it as a horror thriller, which will no doubt disappoint many audience members when they discover that the trailer contains all of the most shocking scenes. The Invisible is actually an intelligent film about coming-of-age angst -- but the intelligence is evident more in the concept than its execution.

Director David S. Goyer, who wrote the screenplay of Batman Begins, seems too interested in character development at the expense of excitement. All too often, The Invisible bogs down in dreary bathos. Its brighter spots are due mostly to the efforts of the two leads, who play well against and with each other. Margarita Levieva is particularly interesting. Though at first she keeps a longshoreman’s hat pulled down around her face, we can sense from her eyes that she’s not really the tough girl she’s been forced to become, and that under that cap is a beautiful head of hair. Of Russian heritage, Levieva is a real beauty we’re likely to see again, hopefully in a film that will show off her talents far better than this one does.

While The Invisible doesn’t achieve the lofty level to which it aspires, that’s preferable to sinking to the lowest level, which most movies achieve without half trying.

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