Hollow Man (2000)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Cocky researcher Sebastian Caine is working on a project to make living creatures invisible. Determined to achieve the ultimate breakthrough, Caine pushes his team to move to the next phase — using himself as the subject. The test is a success, but when the process can't be reversed and Caine seems doomed to future without flesh, he starts to turn increasingly dangerous.
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What critics compared Hollow Man to
Touches of Sleeping With the Enemy (1991) and Hollow Man (2000) aside, Whannell’s rebirth of The Invisible Man feels like a fresh take blending the most minimal of threads from H.G. Wells‘ novel with more urgent themes from today.
The result is a film that is less like Hollow Man (though there are some similar and less convincing visual effects at play) and more akin to Sleeping With the Enemy with the paranoia and trauma cranked to 100 as it focuses on the long-lived affects of gaslighting and abuse.
We’ve come a long way from the era of wrapping actors up in gauze, or Kevin Bacon digitized in “Hollow Man” (which is actually a pretty good flick) - “The Invisible Man” is a welcome addition to the horror remake canon, and a refreshing reminder that seeing is believing.
The narrative is a mix of Sleeping with the Enemy , The Entity and Hollow Man .
The word of the day is hyper-realism, to create fantastical situations that seem plausible enough, instead of men wearing rolls of toilet paper/bandages or unconvincing sera like in the 1990s clunker version of the story, “Hollow Man,” starring Elizabeth Shue and Kevin Bacon.
Of course, given the title and the various iterations of H.G. Wells' famous story that have come and gone over the decades -- including Paul Verhoeven's "Hollow Man" from 2000 that upped the ante in terms of R-rated brutality -- we know the titular character (whoever he or she may be) is likely going to prove that Cecilia's issues are more than just mental manifestations.
The movie is a high-gloss remake of The Invisible Man that earns all its points with amazing special effects — and they are incredible.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, there were oodles of mid-budget ensemble sci-fi flicks about scientists who discover the dangers of playing God; none of them were particularly good (Hollow Man, anyone?), but they essentially functioned as high-minded slashers that weren’t afraid to dabble in lofty themes.
One common test of character today asks whether one would choose the power of flight or invisibility, the latter presumed to be a morally suspect choice (see Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man).
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(Even Hollow Man, the Dutch director’s weakest project, had a main character who pervs out immediately upon receiving superpowers.)
While in the U.S., he found success in over-the-top sci-fi flicks (Robocop, 1987; Total Recall, 1990; Starship Troopers, 1997; Hollow Man, 2000) and the intensely provocative frolics (at least by 1992 standards) of Basic Instinct.
Following 2000’s Hollow Man , he quit the studio system and returned to Europe where he could make the kinds of films he wanted to make.
Director Paul Verhoeven, who had quite the execrable run in the late 1990s with Showgirls, Starship Troopers, and Hollow Man, wanted to make Elle—which was adapted from a French novel that’s set in Paris—in the U.S.
But while Morbius is set up as a horror-thriller in the mold of Hollow Man or The Fly, it sharply pivots: this bloodthirsty monster who has just eviscerated ten men on screen is no threat but the heroic new face of Sony’s Spider-Man-less superhero movies, soon to hook up with Tom Hardy’s Venom.
Meanwhile we've seen Neil engaging in life as a male hustler unbeknownst to his single mom (Elisabeth Shue, "Hollow Man").