HOLLOW MAN (2000)

DIRECTED by Paul Verhoeven.

SCREENPLAY by Andrew W. Marlowe from a story by Gary Scott Thompson & Andrew W. Marlowe inspired by the novel 'The Invisible Man' by H. G. Wells.

STARRING  - Kevin Bacon as Dr. Sebastian Caine,  Elisabeth Shue as Linda McKay,  Josh Brolin as Dr. Matt Kensington,  Kim Dickens as Dr. Sarah Kennedy,  Greg Grunberg as Carter Abbey,  Joey Slotnick as Frank Chase,  Mary Randle as Janice Walton,  William Devane as Dr. Howard Kramer,  Rhona Mitra as Sebastian's neighbour.

Sebastian Caine is a brilliant but amoral scientist heading up a research team employed by the military to develop an invisibility serum intended for use in the battlefield. After months of working on the project and testing on animals, Sebastian and his team have managed to reverse the process and the project is ready to enter it's final stage - turning the first human subject invisible.

Defying his superiors and driven by his narcissistic desire for fame, Sebastian injects himself with the serum and becomes the world's first invisible man. However something goes wrong and the process is unable to be reversed. Sebastian is stuck being invisible.

Whilst his team, led by his ex lover Linda, works round the clock to save him, Sebastian starts to go insane, driven by his own worst instincts and desires and the power he now has to carry them out. Breaking out of the lab, Sebastian goes on a rampage, raping his next door neighbour who he has always spied upon and killing his immediate superior on the project. Now, enraged and power mad, Sebastian is coming for his team and not everybody will survive...

DIALOUGE  - Sebastian  - "It's amazing what you can do...when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror anymore..."

PERFORMANCES  -  Kevin Bacon is not really the kind of actor that you would expect to be cast playing a ghoulish villain, he's more usually seen in "good guy" roles or as the romantic lead, however he makes a really good villain in this. From the outset we can see that there's something not quite right about Sebastian. Although he comes across as being witty and charismatic and even quite funny at times, Sebastian clearly has a darker side. For instance we see him spying on his attractive female neighbour undressing in the flat opposite. He also has a very blasé attitude to the animals that he experiments upon and possess a cruel streak to his sense of humour. These negative personality traits are only exacerbated further once Sebastian becomes invisible, crossing the line into sexualy predatory behaviour and outright unhinged deadly psychosis. It's the slow but insidious erosion of Sebastian's (admittedly rather loose) morals and the calm arrogance that he radiates as he carries out his various atrocities that makes him such an effective villain.

Elisabeth Shue plays Sebastian's ex-girlfriend and research colleague Linda. Shue is also good in her role, initially Linda still has feelings for Sebastian (even though she has started seeing another colleague, Matt Kensington), at the very least she still cares about him as a friend. As Sebastian goes increasingly insane and immoral that lingering care turns into repulsion, horror and then outright hatred towards him. Shue portrays Linda as a strong and spirited woman becoming very much an Ellen Ripleyesque figure as the story progresses.

All the other actors involved play thier roles effectively too, it's interesting to see how thier perceptions towards Sebastian change over the course of the story. At the outset some of the team like him more than others, by the end of the film they are all terrified of him as they fight for thier lives against his murderous rampage.

SFX  - When this movie was released back in 2000, it was widely acclaimed for it's visual effects and for the most part they still hold up well twenty three years later. The effects are all C.G.I. based but they're not too shoddy. The only parts that look slightly past thier sell by date are the scenes where Sebastian is turning invisible and first his skin and then his skeleton disappears. The idea is sound but they do look a little ropey by today's standards...

One thing I do like about these effects is that even though these are entirely animated computer graphics they still look like Kevin Bacon. The resembelence is spot on.

My favourite effect is when they construct a rubber skin tight mask for Sebastian to wear and you can see the blank spaces where his eyes and mouth should be. It's unsettling and creepy looking...

One thing that gets me about the mask though, why the hell didn't they cut out breathing holes for his nostrils ? That must have been so hot and uncomfortable to wear. No wonder Sebastian went batshit insane.

SEX & VIOLENCE - The two go hand in hand in this film. From the outset Sebastian is a sexual predator and becomes doubly so upon gaining invisibility, he spies upon and gropes and fondles several of his female colleagues while they sleep, unaware that he is there. This escalates into full on rape when he sexualy assaults his neighbour.

The violence becomes quite heavy and gory when he's killing off his colleagues slasher villain style in the second half of the movie. You get a drowning, stabbings and one character gets his head smashed open. One of the best visuals in the film is a totally blood soaked Sebastian still invisible but entirely tangible as seemingly gallons of blood drip over his body...

It's only slightly let down by the blood being blatantly computer generated. That's one thing C.G.I. never manages to get right no matter how advanced it gets. C.G.I. blood always looks dodgy, nothing beats good old fashioned practical gore.

RATING  - For what is essentialy a mainstream Hollywood remake of the old classic The Invisible Man this is surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting much if I'm being honest, but it manages to tone down the Hollywood schmaltz and stay true to the spirit and themes of both the original H.G.Wells novel and the classic Universal horror movie. It even manages to provide some genuinely nasty and unsettling moments. Is it the classic that the Claude Reins Universal movie was ? No, it couldn't hope to be, but it's certainly a damn sight better than the recent Blumhouse Invisible Man film.

This is getting 3 and a half invisible arseholes out of 5.