Review of The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) by Chris D — 29 May 2011

I certainly did enjoy the visual effects, which are quite advanced for the time. The props also felt fairly authentic, as Williams gets smaller and smaller. The premise was something I wanted to enjoy, and looked forward to one of the early entries into sci-fi.

Where I was disappointed was the acting, which was only passable (Williams' narrations could be flat at times) and the story, which started off interesting but sagged into tedium after Willams' character fell into the basement.

I also had difficulty suspending disbelief at times: how was he able to pull a good-sized lamp off a table when he was barely larger than the power plug? How could his wife presume him dead, claim they looked everywhere, yet he was in the basement the whole time? Surely he wasn't so small that he would totally escape their desperate searches (perhaps they weren't so eager to find him after all.

..) I was also turned off by the sudden religious turn at the closing of the film: didn't really fit with the overall theme and it somewhat dates the film. Concluding, I would say that sci-fi buffs should certainly see the film for its (at the time) state-of-the-art effects, but otherwise its an average film.