Rent The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

Head Movie (spoiler). - The Incredible Shrinking Man review by Steve

Behind the schlocky fifties exploitation title, this is an intelligent science fiction action film. Grant Williams plays a middle class everyman who is accidentally exposed to radiation and begins to lose size. As he does, his relationship to his comfortable, materialistic lifestyle begins to shift.

Experimental medicine arrests his decline, for a while. He again starts to lose mass and eventually falls into his cellar and is presumed dead by his despairing wife. This last third of the film below ground is about his fight for survival, particularly a brilliantly staged combat with a (relatively) giant spider.

He finds meaning within confines of his new universe which he had lost as diminished man in the normal sized world. Eventually he loses sense of his physicality and becomes a transcendental being, freed from the limits of his human perspective.  It's astonishing that Universal allowed the film to end like this. They actually wanted him to be cured and to return to normality! Which would have been absurd.

This is easily the best film by sci-fi/horror expert Jack Arnold. It was Twilight Zone regular Richard Matheson's debut screenplay, adapted from his novel. The visual effects of the shrinking man's changing relationship with his environment are impressive, but it is his interior, philosophical world that leaves the deeper impression.

Honey, I Shrunk the Existential Crisis - The Incredible Shrinking Man review by griggs

A man exposed to radiation begins to shrink — a daft idea on paper, but The Incredible Shrinking Man turns it into genuine horror. Under Jack Arnold’s sharp direction, the film makes fear itself the monster. No aliens, no mad scientists — just an ordinary man disappearing while the world around him grows hostile.

Arnold’s craftsmanship is remarkable. The 1950s effects still look convincing: clever angles, oversized sets, and pure invention make every room feel like a trap. The cat attack is domestic horror at its finest — absurd, tense, and oddly tragic. You believe every second of it.

What lingers is the psychology. This is a man shrinking in every sense — pride, power, purpose. Seventy years later, it still stings. And that final monologue — calm, cosmic, quietly devastating — turns pulp into poetry, ending on a note that’s small, infinite, and unforgettable.

Brilliant, Imaginative, Classic late-1950s Fantasy - Watchable, Fun and Highly Entertaining - The Incredible Shrinking Man review by PV

This film is old but still works. It is wonderfully imaginative with the special effects as the main character shrinks. Very clever use of clothes and household items to show that and not tell it.

It's all great fun too, with dramatic music and jaw-dropping (for the time) special effects. It is way better than the modern Mat Damon movie DOWNSIZED too which went on and on. No flab on or in The Incredible Shrinking Man!

I actually turned off a modern film which was boring me to watch this one. I had seen clips before but never the whole thing. I am so glad I did.

It's very 1950s with the nuclear threat and cold war hanging over it like a cloud - literally.

They get the media circus just right - it would be the same but worse today.

And how refreshing to watch a great entertaining film with no agenda to push, no boxtick casting, no yawnsome CGI effects.

But what happened to the cat? That's what I want to know.

The ending is of its time, I suppose. Based on a novel by the man who wrote the screenplay, apparently.

Classic stuff anyway. I could watch it all again now. 5 stars