Hollow Man (2000)

reviewed by
Brandon Herring


Rating: * * * out of  * * * *

Rated: R for graphic violence and gore, language, nudity and some sexual content.

Starring: Elizabeth Shue, Kevin Bacon, Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens, Greg Grunberg, Mary Jo Randle, William DeVane.

Running Time: 105 minutes
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven

Horror films are always a favorite of mine. I will admit I've never really seen an invisible man thriller, except the tepid spoof "Memoirs of an Invisible Man" which Chevy Chase, which really wasn't all that good. Anyway when I heard of Hollow Man, I thought wow hopefully this will be a genuinely scary movie, with a great cast, great writing, and some great scares. So I went into the movie expecting all these things, and surprisingly the movie lived well up to my expectations even though I sometimes had doubts about it. "Hollow Man" is a very scary, gory, well-acted, even erotic horror story.

The story is about Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) who is the head of a secret lab, where they try to make animals invisible, and it works. Sebastian is however tired of testing on animals, and without permission from the pentigon, to which is funding all this, he decides to have his crew made up of Linda Foster (Elizabeth Shue), his ex flame, Matt Kensington (Josh Brolin) her boyfriend, and the rest of the scientists, Frank, Sarah, Carter and Janice. They inject him with the fluid that makes him invisible, but after being invisible for a while, Sebastian starts to go a little crazy, and goes out and does some bad stuff.

Linda now threatens to tell the pentagon about what has happened, which really makes Sebastian mad, and he goes a little crazy ending up in a exciting, very intense climax that left me more than satisfying. One warning about watching this film is that the gore in this movie is over-the-top in a good way. There is a copius amount of gore in the film, along with some very graphic violence, one shocking scene of violence almost made me sick, however do not let the violence get in the way of you seeing this movie. It really is surprisingly a good horror movie, with a great cast and great special effects.

For the cast, Kevin Bacon heads the cast as Sebastian Caine, and does a very good job in the lead role. He is very scary as a villian, and around 1/4 of the film it is only his voice. Sometimes however it is what you can't see that scares you the most, and "Hollow Man" is no exception. There are some genuinely scary moments in the film, and I was surprised at how much I was really absorbed into the film. Elizabeth Shue plays Linda Carter, and as always clocks in another great performence. She brings out her character very well, and adds yet another good performance to her record. To round off the cast Josh Brolin does a great performance as well, but seems a bit held back in his role. The supporting roles by Kim Dickens, Greg Grunberg, Mary Jo Randle, and Joey Slotnik, adds some depth to the movie and completes the cast very nicely.

The special effects are jaw-droppingly good. Sometimes I was so intruiged by the film that I lost interest in thinking they were special effects, and thought they were real, which at times scared me. The one complaint I may have had about the movie is that fact that the violence might turn off alot of viewers, which sadly might kill some of the box office. Hopefully all you reading this who don't like violence will still give the film a chance and have fun with it. Paul Verhoeven's direction is nice as well and the pricey $85m dollar budget really shines in the end. One more complaint is that they bill William DeVane as a major character, when he is in only two small scenes, but oh well you take what you can.

In the end however "Hollow Man" delivers the goods: it's extremely intense, smart and sometimes clever thriller, that tends to dive towards the slasher genre, but quickly goes back to its horror routes. The dialogue is a bit cliched, and over-ridden, but everything else in the film is top-notch. It's one hell of a summer ride!

Reviewed by Brandon Herring 8-4-00

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews