Spoilers for The Invisible Man (2020) and minor spoilers for The Haunting Of Hill House (2018) herein.
During the dinner scene at the end of The Invisible Man, both the addict and Haunting of Hill House fan in me immediately realized why Oliver Jackson-Cohen was cast as Adrian.
Like Luke Crain in Hill House, Adrian Griffin is an addict, and the “fix” he needs is Cecilia.
Survival and Power
This correlation between addiction and Adrian’s relationship with Cecilia is clearly established even before we look at the two performances, when Adrian talks about his “hand shaking”, and how him needing Cecilia is the reason his hand shakes. But the correlation is deepened when we look at their characterization and Jackson-Cohen’s performances. Luke’s pleasant dashing grin and bullshitting are seen through and through in just this one scene as Adrian.
In Hill House, Luke’s dashing grin is primarily used for personal heroin related deception, either to conceal his being high or to sugarcoat someone into buying it for him (though it’s not reserved for it). He tries to show up high at Nell’s wedding, at first enthusiastically denying this to Shirley and eventually going from denying he’s high to just saying “he’s level.” When he needs Nell to buy him heroin one last time, he extenuates this request by calling it “getting well.”
Even when he’s sober and needs money for genuinely sober purposes, his family’s trust in him is so gone that he needs to rely on that dashing grin to achieve his end. There’s a scene when Luke needs some money for a hotel so he and his friend don’t have to sleep on the street. In this scene, Luke knows that even him being 90 days sober, even this reasoning, will be met with retaliation (which it is).
Even if that scene isn’t about his addiction per se, Luke using the same deceptive tactics he uses to get heroin as he does to not sleep on the street helps highlight the purpose of his addiction.
To Luke, his addiction is a means of survival. It’s a response to the trauma of his childhood, an escape from the ghosts of his past.
Adrian’s addiction, on the other hand, isn’t a means of survival, but the result of him not getting what he wants. Everything he does is self motivated, his whole life a pursuit of showing off his supposed greatness. Anyone that doesn’t worship him at his very feet needs to be taught a lesson. So when Cecilia doesn’t need him, he’ll do anything he has to to keep her. To control her.
Different Substances, Same Problem
I think these different characterizations highlight the reality that addiction isn’t just “I take bad thing to feel good.” It’s not always substance abuse, and even when it’s “just” substance abuse there are other things going on. One thing I consistently think about is how my relationship with something as simple as caffeine is reminiscent of my relationship to alcohol. The saying “one’s too many, a thousand isn’t enough” is just as applicable to coffee as it was to gin (or beer, wine, whiskey…didn’t particularly enjoy fruit flavored vodka though).
Now, drinking coffee doesn’t lead to me drinking alcohol, and making a pot of decaf is an extremely simple solution. It also won’t lead to me blacking out, driving when I shouldn’t be, and exhibiting horrific, friendship ending behavior.
But while it doesn’t lead to those things, it does serve as a reminder of how close those things are to happening, and how my addiction will be with me all my life. I’m not rid of my demons, I’m simply learning to live above them.
And these demons can be found everywhere, and they give us an unquenchable thirst for anything.
Whether it’s a beer, a shot of heroin, or the whole world itself.
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