In a sentenceAn ordinary home becomes frightening enough to make a cinema feel like the sensible option
Scott Carey (Grant Williams) is shrinking, and familiar domestic surroundings become harder to live in. Louise Carey (Randy Stuart) and Charlie Carey (Paul Langton) remain part of the life he is trying to hold on to as his changing size threatens to make him insignificant. Scott wants to keep his place among other people, but his body increasingly puts ordinary surroundings beyond his control. Rooms that ought to offer safety become threatening when seen from his height. His predicament turns the everyday business of occupying a home into a struggle with scale.
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Jack Arnold makes a shrinking man’s predicament frightening and unexpectedly moving, with Grant Williams giving the effects a human purpose. It deserves more room for its awkward questions about masculinity, but we recommend it warmly.
The Incredible Shrinking Man is an unusually affecting science-fiction film, with enough faith in its simple premise to make familiar surroundings frightening. Jack Arnold keeps our attention on Scott Carey, played by Grant Williams, as diminishing size threatens his sense of being somebody. The effects matter because we have to believe in the change before we can take his fears seriously. Across 81 minutes, the film makes that belief surprisingly easy, though the emotional consequences deserve a little more room.
Grant Williams gives Scott enough sensitivity to stop his predicament becoming merely an interesting technical problem. His fear of becoming insignificant is recognisable even when the physical circumstances are not, and the performance makes that fear worth staying with. We are allowed to care about a man who could easily have become an exhibit. That matters in a film whose most immediately striking achievement is making his body look different. Without this sensitivity, we could spend the whole film thinking about how the effects were done.
Ellis W. Carter’s cinematography makes the altered viewpoint clear without making the camera itself a distraction. Familiar domestic space becomes threatening because we are asked to consider it from Scott’s height, and Jack Arnold trusts that change to supply the unease. Practical and optical effects make that change of scale convincing enough that we spend little time mentally correcting the image. We felt an unwelcome shiver at the sight of a home becoming somewhere its occupant could no longer feel safe. Nothing needs to look particularly sinister for the effect to work.
The screenplay, credited to Richard Matheson and Richard Alan Simmons, leaves some of its most uncomfortable possibilities underexplored. A man becoming smaller raises awkward questions about authority, dependence and what he thinks makes him a man. We wanted the film to spend longer with those questions, particularly where other people are concerned. It understands Scott’s dread of irrelevance more fully than it examines the assumptions behind it.
Albrecht Joseph’s editing keeps this compact film from wearing out its central idea, without hurrying us past the unease. The music is credited to Hans J. Salter, Earl E. Lawrence, Irving Gertz and Herman Stein, and it supports the suspense without becoming the reason to remember it. We found the altered viewpoint more unsettling than the musical prompting. The running time is an advantage here: the film has room to develop its predicament without requiring an entire evening’s commitment.
Science fiction often asks us to accept a great deal of explanation before it lets us feel anything. This is a useful corrective for anyone who finds the genre’s machinery more tiring than exciting. Give Grant Williams a few minutes before deciding that the title has told you everything.
Most critics respond warmly to The Incredible Shrinking Man, with praise clustering around its effects, Grant Williams’s performance and Jack Arnold’s direction. The reviews credit the optical and practical effects with making the shrinking convincing, while Arnold’s framing turns familiar domestic spaces into threats. Williams’s sensitive performance gives the fantasy a human centre, and several critics find lasting force in the story’s simplicity, scares and fear of becoming insignificant.
The differences are chiefly between enthusiasm and more qualified enjoyment, rather than approval and rejection. Empire finds the paranoia dated and the mood downbeat, though it still praises the film’s handling of perspective. Slant Magazine admires its ambition but argues that its psychosexual implications remain underexplored. The supplied scores range from mixed to strongly positive, with no negative verdicts, although the inaccessible New York Times review leaves its reasons for reservation unverified.
Jones calls the film a must-see classic that retains its irony, shock and power. He praises Grant Williams’s sensitive portrayal of a man pushed into a freak’s world.
Read the full review →Bowen sees the film as a startlingly personal and ambitious fantasy that gives its hero’s fears of irrelevance existential force. He praises the ingenious effects and Arnold’s direct visual style, while noting the film cannot fully explore the story’s psychosexual implications.
Read the full review →The review calls it one of the finest films in science fiction. It singles out the story’s simplicity as a strength.
Read the full review →Nathan finds the film very enjoyable despite its dated paranoia and downbeat mood. He praises how Arnold’s camera adopts the shrinking protagonist’s perspective, transforming familiar domestic spaces into threats.
Read the full review →The review is positive, highlighting the film’s uncompromising ending and effective scares. It particularly praises the optical effects that make the shrinking visually convincing.
Read the full review →The page could not be read, so its verdict is unavailable. No specific praise or complaint can be verified from the accessible material.
Read the full review →
The FlyAnother bodily transformation made frightening by the person forced to endure it.
Seconds · not on Fi1m yetFor more speculative unease about identity, dissatisfaction and inhabiting the wrong body.
The Host · not on Fi1m yetA creature feature that keeps an endangered family’s troubles firmly in view.
Fantastic Voyage · not on Fi1m yetFor the pleasures of practical effects and ordinary matter becoming dangerous terrain.
The Red TurtleA quieter fantasy about physical vulnerability and learning to inhabit unfamiliar surroundings.
