Hollow Man : L'Homme sans ombre

I watched Hollow Man in theaters and maybe once after that. I remember liking it. All these years later as a much more seasoned movie fiend, I expected this to be outdated, cheesy and bad. Yet I found myself enjoying it from beginning to end.

It barely feels dated. The visual effects are a thousand times better than I expected them to be. The pacing is great with increased intensity through to the climax. There are so many suspenseful scenes as well as creepy ones.

There are a few questionable parts but the movie is way smarter than the usual late 90s/early 2000s movie. It also repeatedly surprised me with the violence. Every time I think something will be implied or will happen off screen, the movie says nope, in your face. I miss when movies weren't afraid and am so sick of all the neutered PG-13 horror movies.

(about 3 viewings, 6/29/2024)

Hollow Man is a ride, baby. It isn't scary as the ads would have you believe, but I'll be dammed if it isn't one of the most entertaining horror flicks I've seen in a while. In this age of computer generated, digital effects I have a hard time telling good special effects from bad (they all start to look the same after a while), but this one has a few of the most impressive sequences I've ever seen on film. I assume this is one of the most special effect-intensive movies ever attempted (aside form the latest Star Wars), and they do dazzle, so it's a shame the story doesn't quite measure up. It starts to get a little tired in the third act, but what the hell, I was entertained.

Aside form Kevin Bacon, there were no real stand-out performances in Hollow Man. The invisibility serum seems to bring on severe emotional instability in animals, so Bacon's character decides to try it out on himself. Problem is, Kevin is already nuttier than squirrel turds so this is not the smartest of decisions, but he runs the project, so he calls the shots. Mayhem ensues. This is a really clever idea for a horror film, and the smart ways the scientists think of to detect Bacon in his invisible form never ceases to impress. It's nice to see technology has finally made it so that they can do just about anything you can think of in film.

Paul Verhoeven is what makes this movie most attractive for me. I really love his go-for-broke, over the top directing style, and it's put to good use in this one especially. He took a step in the right direction by distancing himself from hack-supreme Joe Esterhaus in the entertaining but flawed Starship Troopers, and now he's back on his feet again. I can just picture him screaming like a madman on set, frothing at the mouth for "more blood, MORE BLOOD!". He doesn't shy away from gore, violence, sex, or anything. He just jumps right in. I like that. This movie is worth about an 8/10 stars. Worth the price of admission for the effects alone. G'night!

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. The acting was quite adequate, the film score very imaginative and the special effects amazing (and gruesome). It copies "The Invisible Man", made half a century before, in having its protagonist lose his mind but unlike the other film, there is no humor to be found - nor any reason for it. It is a bit too apocalyptic near the end and I felt that the special effects turned it perhaps too much into a technical spectacle, but it made sense in general and brought me more pleasure than I had expected. Kevin Bacon was certainly up the his part and William Devane was frightening in his brief scene,

Curtis Stotlar

This could, and should, have been an interesting look on the idea of invisibility. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, they ran out of ideas and decided to just kill everyone off and have it end in huge explosions, demonstrating a total lack of creativity. Too bad. It could have been great, were it not for the total lack of good acting, the one-dimensional characters, the corny lines and the general lack of anything worthwhile in the movie at all, other than good special effects. I feel bad for Paul Verhoeven; he used to make great movies; RoboCop, Basic Instinct & Starship Troopers were all way better than this mainstream garbage. The only good thing about this movie is the special effects, and, believe me, they are good. They are just not good enough to distract the viewer from all the negative points about the movie. It's really too bad that they couldn't make a better movie about invisibility; we've never had a truly good movie dealing with the rush of power it would be to be invisible. This movie tries, but it just falls short. All those great special effects, and no good movie to back them up. I'd only recommend this to special effect nerds, people who'll watch a movie regardless of quality just to see good special effects. I can't imagine anyone else actually enjoying this movie. I gave it a 6/10, but only because of the special effects.

Hollow Man boasts some pretty impressive visual effects and does have an intriguing story. Kevin Bacon plays Sebastion Caine, an arrogant scientist who develops a serum for invisibility. Withholding information from his superiors, Caine tests his serum on himself and undergoes a transformation that is quite visually arresting. It's like an anatomy book come to life. But while Caine's transformation and subsequent experiments with his new found power prove interesting, the movie fails to capture what it feels like to truly be invisible. Caine says to his colleagues, "You have know idea how much fun this is." In truth, we don't. We see Caine slowly going mad and trapping his fellow scientists in the lab when they threaten to go public. But, we don't get any sense of power from Caine. True he does venture out into public and enters the apartment of his very fetching neighbor, but that's about all the real world we see with Caine. It would've been interesting to see Caine in the real world, and what would've been done to capture him. Instead, we have Bacon, Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin and a few others mixing it up in a hidden lab somewhere in D.C. While the actors try to make the best with what they have, Paul Verhoeven tries to goose us a little. He succeeds in a few instances, and he does manage to hold your attention for a while, but the ending is the weakest link in the movie. Had there been a stronger ending, the movie would've been a little better. As it is now, it's a good exercise in visual effects territory, but there are so many other possibilities that lay with the story of an invisible human being.