Hollow Man (2000)

Scientists discover how to make people invisible, but their test subject becomes an insane killer who stalks them.

Director:

Paul Verhoeven

Writers:

Gary Scott Thompson (story), Andrew W. Marlowe (story),

Stars:

Elisabeth Shue, Kevin Bacon, Josh Brolin

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 7 wins & 9 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Elisabeth Shue	...	Linda McKay
Kevin Bacon	...	Sebastian Caine
Josh Brolin	...	Matthew Kensington
Kim Dickens	...	Sarah Kennedy
Greg Grunberg	...	Carter Abbey
Joey Slotnick	...	Frank Chase
Mary Randle	...	Janice Walton
William Devane	...	Dr. Howard Kramer
Rhona Mitra	...	Sebastian's Neighbor
Pablo Espinosa	...	Ed, Warehouse Guard
Margot Rose	...	Mrs. Martha Kramer
Jimmie F. Skaggs	...	Wino
Jeffrey Scaperrotta	...	Boy in Car (as Jeffrey George Scaperotta)
Sarah Bowles	...	Girl in Car
Kelli Scott	...	Mom

Storyline

Elisabeth Shue is Linda Foster, a scientist who is working on a serum to make people invisible. When another scientist tries the serum and becomes invisible his colleagues figure another way to bring him back to the normal world.

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Plot Keywords:

scientist | invisibility | experiment | researcher | animal | 

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Taglines:

If you can't see him, if you can't find him, you can't stop him.

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Genres:

Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong violence, language and some sexuality/nudity

Details

Country:

USA Germany

Language:

English

Release Date:

4 August 2000 (USA)

Also Known As:

El hombre sin sombra

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$95,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£1,634,386 (UK) (29 September 2000)

Gross:

ESP 1,778,455,868 (Spain) (29 June 2001)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Columbia Pictures Corporation, Global Entertainment Productions GmbH & Company Medien KG

Technical Specs

Runtime:

112 min 119 min (director's cut)

Sound Mix:

SDDS (8 channels) Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

To get the right reaction from the cast, Paul Verhoeven had speakers put in different places on the set, and had Kevin Bacon's voice come from different speakers so the cast would genuinely react to the invisible character moving around. For the scene with the invisible gorilla, the director screamed to the microphone imitating gorilla noises.

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Goofs

When they pull the circuit board out of the camera, it would have lost power immediately and the recorded image would have stopped then, not when they pulled the loop wires off.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Sebastian: [another failed molecule design] Damn it!

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Connections

Referenced in Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1: Total Re-Carl (2003)

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Soundtracks

"Hotels"
Performed by Juliana Hatfield

User Reviews

Hollow Man takes an abundance of fantastic special effects and narrative possibilities and reduces it all to an expensive but cheesy horror movie.

Ever since the original Halloween was released in 1978, there have been countless imitation films that desperately, although primarily unsuccessfully, attempt to feed off of the success of that film by copying its premise of a faceless and unstoppable killer. In the late 90s, there have been a resurgence of these films, such as the Scream movies, which started off good and then went sharply downhill with each additional sequel, Urban Legend, and I Know What You Did Last Summer (as well as, God willing, it's only sequel, I Still Know What You Did Two Summers Ago). Hollow Man is a film that takes a fantastic premise and reduces it to yet another of these cheap imitation slasher films.

Sure, the whole invisible man thing has been done before. Done to death, if you include literary examples. But let's face it, the possibility of human invisibility is one of the most fascinating premises that you can possibly tell a story about. The unfortunate thing about Hollow Man was that no one involved with the making of the movie seemed to realize that. What you have here is the development of an invisibility serum (as well as a reversing visibility serum) by a brilliant scientist, who successfully uses it on a gorilla in some of the best special effects scenes to date, and then uses it on himself. Well, of course he uses it on himself, what scientist could possibly resist? And why would any scientist WANT to resist? Well, the reason may be that, evidently, invisibility serum turns even the most intelligent scientists into raving madmen.

The absolutely infinite amount of possibilities for an invisible character are completely ignored here in favor of turning him into yet another bland faceless killer. This time, we may know who it is that's trying to kill people, but what we don't know is why he completely ignores the outside world. This is the greatest scientific discovery of mankind, and this bonehead decides to use it to become a peeping tom and to spy on his girlfriend. This vast and hugely unfortunate simplification of the potential for the story of an invisible man is both bitterly disappointing and more than a little insulting. As Roger Ebert mentions in his review of Hollow Man, it seems that director Paul Verhoeven, who directed such great films as RoboCop and Total Recall, seems to think that his audience is so intellectually dim that they prefer a mindless killer to the incredibly imaginative villain (or protagonist) that Dr. Sebastian Caine could have become.

Hollow Man is an absolutely fascinating display of brilliant special effects, which seem to map out internal anatomy just as good as any medical textbook, and is also a great deal of fun as the visible characters desperately try to make Dr. Caine visible again, but it is a dismal failure on the story level. The film starts out with a gigantic amount of intelligence, both that required for the development of an invisibility serum and that involved in the brilliant premise of the story, but winds up in the end as nothing more than yet another mindless thriller, completely lacking in thought and intrigue.