Movie · 2000 · Action, Science Fiction, Thriller · 1h 52m · R · English
Curator score: 0.8/10 (230.2K ratings)
Think you’re alone? Think again.
Overview
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.
Ratings
Curator score: 0.8/10
IMDb: 5.9/10
Letterboxd: 2.83/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 25%
Metacritic: 24
TMDB: 6.0/10
Director
Paul Verhoeven
Production
Columbia Pictures, Red Wagon Entertainment, Global Medien KG
Cast
Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens, Greg Grunberg, Joey Slotnick, Mary Randle, William Devane, Rhona Mitra, Tom Woodruff Jr., Pablo Espinosa, Margot Rose, Jimmie F. Skaggs, Jeffrey Scaperrotta, Sarah Bowles, Kelli Scott, Steve Altes, J. Patrick McCormack, Darius A. Sultan, David Vogt
Curator Review
Verdict
A glossy, nasty sci-fi thriller with real Verhoeven bite, but it’s also uneven and often more interested in provocation than character depth. The effects, premise, and mean-spirited voyeurism make it memorable, even if the movie doesn’t fully land its ideas.
Best for
fans of cynical 90s/2000s studio sci-fi
viewers who like body-horror-adjacent invisibility stories
people interested in Verhoeven’s trashy, satirical edge
audiences okay with sexual menace and ugly behavior
Skip if
you want a clean, thoughtful remake of The Invisible Man
you’re sensitive to assault/sexual violence content
you prefer likable protagonists
you want tight plotting over lurid spectacle
Overview
Hollow Man is one of those big-budget genre movies that feels both overbuilt and weirdly feral. Paul Verhoeven turns an invisibility premise into a study of male entitlement, voyeurism, and the thrill of acting without consequence, with Kevin Bacon leaning hard into the role of a scientist who was already rotten before the experiment went wrong.
Worth noting
The movie’s strongest asset is its commitment to nasty spectacle. The effects work still has a queasy physicality, and Verhoeven stages the invisible body as something invasive, sexual, and predatory rather than merely cool. It’s less a sleek sci-fi adventure than a mean joke about power, desire, and the fantasy of being unaccountable.
Bottom line
That said, the film is also blunt and lopsided, with characters and ideas often flattened to make room for shocks. If you want subtext, it’s not subtle; if you want a polished thriller, it can feel crude. But if you’re in the mood for a glossy studio movie that’s genuinely sleazy and morally ugly, it has a nasty charge.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Chris Sumner (3★) · 1468 likes
love Kevin Bacon? Watch this film.
Hate kevin Bacon? Watch it anyway, you won't have to look at him for long.
Will Menaker (3.5★) · 847 likes
Leave it to Verhoeven to make an Invisible Man movie and just dive head first into all of the queasy, voyeuristic, perverted and truly despicable things that every teenage boy has fantasized about doing with a power such as this one. Kevin Bacon does a good update of the original Claude Rains portrayal, by playing a "mad scientist" who rather than being driven insane by his invention, was someone who was already totally depraved and just looking for an outlet. It's a minor Verhoeven, but still a truly nasty and shocking movie.
matt lynch (3.5★) · 565 likes
"You're goddamn right it's a gift. And if you weren't so shortsighted, you'd let me out of this cage to explore it."
Verhoeven's patented misanthropy extends past the obvious sci-fi overreacher plot to cover not just the basic inhumanity of a person unbound by consequence, but also to consider all of the ways darkness tempts us, not just the physical but the subconscious places where nobody can see us.
not a particularly complicated work but as in a lot of Verhoeven's films he makes the subtext text while the general depravity and exaggerated genre tropes subtlely conceal a deeper cynicism.
Griffin Newman · 565 likes
SPOILER: His penis gets invisible, too.
emilyrugburn (1.5★) · 547 likes
Yeah I’d say if the dude is making r*pe jokes on the way to his invisibility procedure, ehhh maybe he’s not the right candidate for invisibility 🥴 (If you watch, trigger warning for multiple assault scenes)
2018 · Action, Thriller, Science Fiction · 1h 40m · R · Curator 6.1/10 (527.5K ratings) · Where to watch: Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
A leaner, nastier modern genre film about bodily control, violence, and the loss of agency.
Topics
sci-fi thriller, body horror, voyeuristic, erotic thriller, scientific experiment, moral decay, 2000s studio movie, dark satire, practical effects, predatory