“It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have to look at yourself in the mirror anymore.”

Justin’s rating: I want to see the sequel where the invisible gorilla goes on a banana rampage

Justin’s review: In my freshman year of college, one of our professors went on a weird tear about how being invisible would be the most corruptible superpower to have. It was, he said, because you could commit any crime you wanted and not be held accountable. I don’t know if that’s exactly true, physics and DNA testing being what they are, but I won’t argue that you can’t get up to a whole lot of mischief if you were see-through. For Exhibit A on this, I present 2000’s Hollow Man.

Fresh off of an amazing three scifi movie streak (Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers), Director Paul Verhoeven attempted to pull a fourth winner with this $95M thriller. It was pretty much his last notable movie to date and probably the one that people have forgotten the most unless they’re slumming in certain scifi streaming categories.

Despite releasing in 2000, Hollow Man has a very strong late-90s vibe about it, especially with its extreme love of CGI. I strongly suspect that the advances in computer graphics factored in greatly to the idea of reviving H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man for a new generation. Heck, we were using CGI for everything else, why not use it to… um… not see something?

Sebastian (Kevin Bacon) and Linda (Elisabeth Shue) head up a research team that’s trying to create an invisibility formula. While it works, it’s got some drawbacks. The actual process looks only slightly less painful than being trapped in the room with friends arguing about politics. Also, it kind of morphs you into a psychotic lunatic.

So why not inject the one guy in the room who’s already showing delusions of grandeur and is established to be a creepy peeping tom? That’s the kind of role that Kevin Bacon does best! Also, any opportunity for him to show off his genitals in a feature film is one that he will never pass up. Of course, he goes nuts in all sorts of bad ways until he gets his final comeuppance.

If I recall, my friends and I all kinda liked Hollow Man when it came out because of those neat CGI effects and the semi-horror vibe. But it also got critically slapped around and then left to slink off into obscurity with its shame tucked between its legs. Yet this is Paul Verhoeven we’re talking about, and his works often deserve a second look down the line.

What’s interesting to me here is that Verhoeven effectively made three movies in one. The first part is a fun scifi thriller which is in love with its tech, sets, and special effects. Then it goes into a slow-burning (and overly long) suspense horror as Sebastian gets away with his darker impulses. Finally, the movie lurches into a full-blown stalker slasher because — let us not forget — this is a Verhoeven film. Many someones have to die in over-the-top gruesome ways. It’s his law.

It’s a lot of tonal and genre shifts, giving us one of the most sinister invisible man movies ever made. At times while I watched this, I got vague Jurassic Park vibes with the high-tech lab and monkeying about with nature, but it stopped well short of kids petting a triceratops and John Williams-scored helicopter rides. Instead, it’s as if Verhoeven got the wrong idea from my college professor and thought we’d all like to go along for the ride of an invisible pervert and misogynist.

When we compare Hollow Man to Verhoeven’s other scifi flicks, the one difference that leaps out at me is that we don’t get a protagonist to root for here. Most of the research team — including a younger Josh Brolin! — are likeable enough folks but not the centerpiece, and Elisabeth Shue (as much as I usually like her) blandly fills the role of Final Girl while sometimes being weirdly amenable to Bacon’s repeated creepy advances.

So it’s a mixed bag — and probably always was. If this was made later on with any other director, it would’ve been a bland PG-13 escapade. It’s certainly not that, for better AND for worse. Hollow Man wasn’t ever destined to go down as a classic, but I can see it gaining the devoted loyalty of a type of FX-happy scifi fan. Me? I’m probably not one of them.

Intermission!

• These opening credits make me want some alphabet soup
• Didn’t see that mouse death coming, did ya?
• When your little computer balls won’t stay together, you’ve lost the game
• Our hero, the peeping tom
• Infrared goggles that shoot red light into your eyes and wall tranqs make for a good work environment
• APE ESCAPE
• Shock paddles can make you fully visible for like a half-second
• “You just lied to the f-ing Pentagon!”
• I’m sure Josh Brolin hates getting an acting gig where Elisabeth Shue had to nibble on his belly.
• “Ladies, please, this is science.”
• Warning: A whole lot of naked Kevin Bacon
• OK, if he’s bothered by the lights because his eyelids are transparent, wouldn’t he be blind because his retinas are as well?
• Don’t pee in an office with an invisible dude
• All scientists know how to make latex masks for unfortunately invisible dudes
• I like how his latex mask is a nice update on the old wraps
• His vomit is invisible too? Because… why?
• Sebastian’s car screams “BUY THE SOUNDTRACK WHEREVER CDS ARE SOLD”
• Sebastian freaking out the kids is pretty funny
• “Who’s gonna know?”
• The infrared dog kill is traumatic
• “How bad?” “Bad enough to wake up a few generals.”
• Sebastian coming out of the smoke is a neat moment
• Why they don’t immediately put on the IR goggles and KEEP THEM ON is beyond me
• She deserved that slap, she really did
• Yeah just keep screaming the name of the guy who is obviously hiding from you, he’ll probably respond
• “I’m losing resolution!” is the dumbest line in this movie
• Yes, separate why don’t you
• Blood fight!
• “He didn’t hit any organs!” Wait, how do you know this from a light visual inspection after you RIPPED that bar out of him?
• Fun times whipping up an electromagnet as you’re freezing to death
• I got a laugh out of Linda leaving her boyfriend by a flaming barrel surrounded by blood
• Being set on fire doesn’t really hurt that much if you’re, you know, invisible. Also, all of that ash will conveniently fall off.
• How many times are they going to turn their back on the supposedly dead bad guy only to have him come back to life?
• Explosions can send elevator cars flying up and down. Also the flames stop nice and neat underneath your feet.
• Been burned and electrocuted? You still want to make out, trust me.
• How deep is this underground lab? China?