Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Hollow Man' (2000)

OH MY GOD, THIS MOVIE WAS SO FUCKING BORING!!! I sware to god it should have failed my 30-minute rule, but technically something was always happening in the first 30 minutes. But fuck technical, the goddamn plot doesn't kick off till about the halfway mark. I mean, this movie is basically just a remake of The Invisible Man (1933). That movie gets rolling right from the punch. Mad scientist turns himself invisible and basically lets the power go to his head. That whole setup takes, what... 10 minutes? Not even? In this movie, over thirty fucking minutes are devoted to exposition before Kevin Bacon starts the rape and murder. Speed it the fuck up! Superpowers went to his megalomaniacal brain, the chemicals caused him to lose his mind, maybe a little from column A and column B, WHATEVER, just fucking get there!

I'll talk about the acting before I get to the spoilers, but basically, I can't even talk about the plot without spoilers because it was so damn bad. This movie drags the fucking plot kicking and screaming to the end and doesn't even try to do anything fun with it. But I digress, the acting was good. It could be a little hammy at times, but it was there; better than we could expect for horror. I mean, we got people like Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin, apart from Kevin Bacon... but... so the fuck what? The studio had enough money to dump into actors and FX, and still fucked it up, so who fucking cares if the acting is good. There have been WAY better horror movies and thrillers with much worse acting.

The FX were also pretty good for the time. Remember, in 2000, CGI was still new and hadn't really gotten very good. So, for what it was, it was actually stellar. The level of detail they put into the invisibility transformation and all the moments when Kevin Bacon is invisible but made visible by something like blood are actually quite impressive. Don't get me wrong, they look cartoonish by modern standards, but for the day, it was top-notch.

If you can't tell, I don't recommend this movie. But let me really get into why...

SPOILERS!!!

The sheer amount of times I yelled "Put on the fucking goggles!" or "Don't take the fucking goggles off!" or "Why the fuck aren't you wearing the fucking goggles!" gave me a headache. This movie would have been over in minutes after Kevin Bacon goes nuts if the rest of the cast just kept their fucking goggles on. Jesus FUCKING Christ, they know it's the only way to see him and they basically never bother to use it, because they constantly neglect to put the fucking things on, or put them on and take them off again FOR NO FUCKING REASON! The moment they knew Kevin's character had gone mad, those fucking things should have been glued to their face. But NOOOOOO, we have to spoon-feed the fucking villain, don't we? We weren't clever enough to write our way out of that one, weren't we?

Also, did this whole thing need to be shot in the underground lab? How fun would it have been to chase the invisible prick through the city, causing mayhem? But I guess they really had to justify the spending they put into the set, because almost ALL the movie happens there, until it's a game of cat and mouse exclusively on that set. That's just fucking boring. You only needed a lab big enough to hold the cast and a couple animals. It didn't need to be this whole fucking thing!

And JESUS H. FUCKING CHRIST, there's a scene where they literally light Kevin's character on fire AND THE PLOT STILL KEEPS GOING! He's not a fucking super soldier, he's just invisible. Being burnt head to toe would put anyone in such agonizing pain, they would just roll up into a ball and likely die, suffering the whole time. Especially if a latex mask and gloves LITERALLY melted onto your body. You would pass out from the pain! It's too much of a reach to suspend that level of disbelief. Frankly, there were too many points when the movie should have been over for me to give it a pass. When I say 'drag the plot kicking and screaming' I mean toddler-level kicking and screaming. It's like the writers were fucking with the director to see how many corners they could write him into.

Listen, for some fucking reason, this movie is kinda considered a classic. That technically IS enough of a reason to watch it, but... take it from me, you're not missing anything.