Hollow Man (2000) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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I’m a hollow man. Nobody sees it, but I’m hollowed out.

Hollow Man is an intense and (more) scientifically accurate portrayal of an Invisible Man story. It features mature themes that more closely align to what would happen if humans could actually become invisible. Plus it’s the second Sci-Fi Saturdays film this month to feature a gorilla!

First Impressions

This trailer presents a young scientist choosing to use himself as a guinea pig for an experiment that ends up making himself invisible. A woman asks what is probably the central question of the film, “what would you do if you know you can’t be seen.” The scientist then goes a little mad as he stalks and attacks various members of his team, including his girlfriend. Various special effects shots show that audiences will get to see an invisible man in the rain, smoke, or under a pile of latex (not in that way, ewww). This is the Hollow Man’s time to shine.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) is a young scientist working with a small team on an invisibility formula. They work out of an abandoned looking warehouse in Washington, DC, in a high-tech lab several stories down. Matt Kensington (Josh Brolin) is bitten while trying to sedate an invisible gorilla named Isabelle so they can test the current antidote. Sebastian helps using a tranquilizer gun, and Isabelle is given the injection. She begins to reappear layer by layer from circulatory system to bones to muscles. The other project lead, Linda McKay (Elizabeth Shue), is ecstatic.

The group of scientists, plus veterinarian Sarah Kennedy (Kim Dickens), EMT Carter Abbey (Greg Grunberg), and technicians Frank Chase (Joey Slotnick) and Janice Walton (Mary Randle), go to a nice restaurant to celebrate. At the Pentagon, Sebastian presents his recent findings to Dr. Kramer (William Devane), stating they haven’t yet cracked the reversion problem. Outside, Linda and Matt are distressed by Sebastian’s lies but agree to move to human trials, with Sebastian volunteering as the subject, even against their better judgment.

The plan is to have Sebastian become invisible for three days. He injects himself with the serum and suffers a tremendous, and nearly debilitating seizure, as he slowly fades into nothingness. Members of the team take shifts keeping an eye on Sebastian, who is visible with the use of a thermal imaging camera in his room. He becomes playful, messing with the team, but goes too far when he fondles Sarah one evening while she is sleeping.

After 86 hours they attempt to bring him back, but the current formula does not work as well as it did on the gorilla, and he remains invisible. They make a latex mask for Sebastian, so he at least can be seen around them. Going stir crazy he leaves the facility, against protocol, and returns to his apartment. He sees his attractive female neighbor through her window and decides to use his invisibility to his advantage. He enters her apartment and rapes her.

Matt, who is romantically involved with Linda, is working on a new formula, but he admits he’s not as smart as Sebastian. Linda threatens to go to the committee if Sebastian sneaks off base again. After nearly two weeks of being invisible Sebastian’s mental state begins to further diminish, become tense and angry. He discovers that Linda, his ex-girlfriend, is sleeping with Matt, so he kills a lab dog, and then follows Matt and Linda to Dr. Kramer’s house, where he later drowns the man in his pool. At the facility the next day Sebastian revokes everyone’s security passwords and begins killing his co-workers one by one.

He strangles Janice, knocks out Carter who smashes his head on a pipe, stabs Frank with a crowbar, and snaps Sarah’s neck before dragging her into a freezer. That’s also where he traps an injured Matt and Linda. Sebastian then prepares to blow up the lab and leave. Linda uses science to escape the locked freezer and burns Sebastian with a homemade flamethrower. She and Matt try to escape through the elevator shaft as the lab explodes. A partially visible Sebastian drags Linda back onto the broken elevator, attempting to kiss her. She grabs the support cable, disengaging it from the lift, and Sebastian falls into the fiery mess below.

“What would you do if you knew you couldn’t be seen?” – Sarah Kennedy

History in the Making

Paul Verhoeven’s film Hollow Man is far from the first film about invisibility, but it is one that re-engaged audiences with a newer, more serious look at the aspects of invisibility. Most genre fans are aware that HG Wells wrote the original 1897 novel that inspired stories about invisible characters. This was produced as one of Universal Pictures monster films in the early 1930s. The success of The Invisible Man (1933) led to four thematic spinoffs (The Invisible Man Returns, Invisible Woman, Invisible Agent and The Invisible Man’s Revenge), and a host of other films and tv shows that featured invisibility. But movies from the prior three decades that dealt with the subject all seemed to be comedies, such as Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (Disney-1972), The Man Who Wasn’t There (1983) and Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992). There was also a horror comedy called The Invisible Maniac (1990) that seems like it took to some of the more thematic aspects of Hollow Man, but in a humorous way.

The film was another science-fiction genre piece for director Paul Verhoeven whose previous works include Robocop, Total Recall, and his previous film, Starship Troopers. It also marks his first foray into the horror genre and his last film produced in America. However, there’s nothing about this film that makes it seem like his previous work. I had completely forgotten that it was a “Verhoeven” film, because it doesn’t line up with his earlier films. The three films listed above were all extremely graphic in terms of violence, and Robocop and Starship Troopers have less than subtle satire about their subject matter. Hollow Man, while having its share of blood and scenes not-for-the-squeamish doesn’t have any of the biting wit that genre fans associate with the director. Kevin Bacon’s Sebastian is a great character who is already on the fence in terms of social niceties. He becomes a downright sociopath when granted the ability to do anything at any time. But there could have been more to it. Perhaps, it’s that the film devolves into too many contrived elements in the third act. Verhoeven may have been more concerned with setting up and dealing with visual effects rather than focusing on story-level elements he was known for.

Genre-fication

Invisible characters on film were nothing new. Filmmakers had discovered ways to make a person look like they were not there using wires, double-exposure, and some other clever tricks. But with the advent of computer-aided visual effects, the ability to craft a more believable and fantastic invisible man was right around the corner. The real trick with invisibility is showing the character just enough so the audience has someone they can relate to (either for good or bad). Having an invisible character that is never seen and includes other characters conversing with nothingness would be a boring film. Filmmakers needed to come up with a different approach.

John Carpenter’s comedic Memoirs of an Invisible Man already had a number of groundbreaking advancements in the use of visual effects when portraying an invisible man, including showing the inside-back of the clothes worn by the characters, having an invisible man wear some kind of makeup on his face (again revealing both the front and back at the same time), and placing the invisible character into a rainstorm which showed a glistening wet body. Hollow Man took these to the next level. The crew on this film was able to replicate Kevin Bacon’s character in multiple outfits, with and without a creepy latex mask that light showed through. He was also photographed in rain (from the sprinkler system), fog/mist, in a swimming pool, and on fire. None of these effects were created out of thin air however. Kevin Bacon (or a stunt double) was clad in various colored unitards, depending on the environment, in order to have the visual effects team erase him in post-production. And he was included in nearly every scene that he was invisible to provide a scene partner for the other actors. That seems like a lot of extra visual effects work.

But Hollow Man had more to give. The transformation sequences of invisibility films usually involved some fading away of the character with an optical dissolve, or sometimes the filmmakers would choose not to show the actual effect itself. The character would just be invisible after some point. Verhoeven had other plans and made the invisibility process (and its restorative version) a gradual removal of each layer of the person’s body. An intricate computer model of both Kevin Bacon and a gorilla were created that included detailed anatomical versions of their bones, circulatory system, musculature. and organs. This complex “peeling away” of layers as the character became invisible was a high point in this film. It was both amazing and a little gross, which considering Verhoeven’s past work was not unexpected.

Societal Commentary

What Hollow Man really does for the genre of invisible characters is make invisibility scary again. In my article on the 1933 Invisible Man film, I pointed out the lunacy that Claude Rains brought to his character. The serum which rendered him invisible also made him unhinged. That same idea applies to Bacon’s character. Except here it also amplifies his egomania and his perversions. Sebastian already had issues about his importance in the project, and the need to dominate his co-workers. After becoming invisible, all of those things become so much easier for him. His decisions seem easier, as he puts it, when you “don’t have to look at yourself in the mirror.”

The film takes the character to dark places that people may have joked about regarding invisibility but had not shown on screen. Early in the film, as they are walking to the lab to inject the serum, Sebastian tells the joke about Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Invisible Man. It’s basically a joke about rape, and Sebastian has already demonstrated he is voyeur, looking across the courtyard at his female neighbor discrobing. After becoming invisible, he sees her naked again and realizes that no one will know. He sneaks into her apartment and dominates her violently. For him, visibility means accountability. It’s the same power that comes over people who post anonymously on the internet. Some people do not have the ability to self-govern social behavior when there is zero or little accountability for their actions. Thematically some of these worst traits of Sebastian may be what inspired elements of the 2020 remake of The Invisible Man, which deals with a spousal abuser and manipulator becoming invisible and how that would be seen in the modern world.

Aside from the horror of the physical acts that Sebastian performs, whether it’s invading personal privacy, or sexually assaulting women, comes the horror from Verhoevn’s placement of the camera. Many slasher horror films imbue the camera with a point-of-view style setup. The camera takes on the gaze of the killer. That’s exactly what happens here. Since Sebastian is invisible, there’s no person to get in the way of the audience being placed in his shoes. The camerawork makes the audience complicit in Sebastian’s crimes, adding to the sickening feeling some individuals may feel regarding his actions. Verhoeven is quoted as saying that “a lot of viewers follow him further than you would expect.”

The Science in The Fiction

The science of invisibility is one thing that audiences always point out that films get wrong. Examples include the food a character eats or the cigarettes they smoke being visible inside their invisible body, or the invisible character being unable to see due to their retina being invisible, and as such unable to have light focused on it and into the optic nerve. Or course, creating a filmic world where real science would make for a less exciting movie. Hollow Man does go a little further with its portrayal. Sebastian has increased sensitivity to light due to the fact that his eyelids are transparent. This also may lead to an increase in his mania, due to inability to close his eyes. The only way he would be able to get relief would be to smother a pillow or some other blinder over his face. This was solved, to some extent in the 2020 film where the character wears a suit that contains optical imagery solving both the aspect of the character being naked as well as the invisible eyeballs.

Strangely, the biggest complaint in the film is not the invisibility, but the dumb smart-characters. These scientists work in a secretive government facility where not even the guards know what is going on, yet there seems to be no redundant way of calling for help should an accident occur. Linda is shown as an intelligent and resourceful woman, even standing up to Sebastian’s continual harassment. She devises an electromagnet made out of a cannibalized defibrillator machine (why is that in the freezer). Under pressure, she can be a smart person. That is until they escape the freezer.

Sebastian has set a trap by creating homemade nitroglycerin and inserting vials of it into the lab centrifuge. He sets a countdown timer for the centrifuge to start and then leaves. Linda and Matt discover the bomb and freak out, trying to escape before it can explode. Somehow they don’t realize they can simply unplug the device to prevent it from continuing. This, along with some other silliness in the third act makes Hollow Man fall short of an exceptional film.

The Final Frontier

Hollow Man may be one of the few invisible man films to not use the name “Griffin” for one of its characters. This is the name of the original character from HG Wells’ story. Instead, Sebastian’s last name is Caine, which calls to mind the biblical sibling Cain who slew his brother Abel out of jealousy. Sebastian too is driven out of jealousy regarding Matt’s affair with Linda, who Sebastian still believes belongs to him. It’s subtle, but an interesting note. On another name related note, with this viewing, I noticed that the name of the gorilla, Isabelle, might be a nod to her place in the story. Does her name sound a bit like it’s a take on invISIBLE? Maybe that’s a stretch, but it seems like a clever thing that a screenwriter might do.

The film stands as a strong story of power corrupting with Kevin Bacon giving a solid performance as an unlikeable protagonist (who quickly becomes the antagonist). Its special effects are cutting edge which help sell the reality of a naked man running around invisibly causing havoc. And while there are plenty of silly characterizations, and character mistakes, the film still works as a strong entry in both the Sci-Fi Saturdays and 31 Days of Horror articles this month.

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