Hollow Man


Hollow Man is a 2000 science fiction horror thriller film directed by Paul Verhoeven, written by Andrew W. Marlowe from a story he co-wrote with Gary Scott Thompson, and starring Elisabeth Shue, Kevin Bacon, Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens, Greg Grunberg, Joey Slotnick, Mary Randle, and William Devane. The film is about Sebastian Caine, a scientist who volunteers to be the first human test subject for a serum that renders the recipient invisible. When his fellow scientists are unable to restore him back to normal, he becomes increasingly unstable and eventually goes on a killing spree.
The film grossed $190 million worldwide but was not well received by critics. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 2001, losing to Gladiator. A direct-to-video stand-alone sequel called Hollow Man 2, starring Christian Slater and Peter Facinelli, was released in 2006.

Plot

Brilliant but narcissistic scientist Sebastian Caine has developed a serum for the military that can make a subject invisible. His team includes ex-girlfriend Linda McKay, Matt Kensington, Sarah Kennedy, Janice Walton, Carter Abbey, and Frank Chase. The team succeeds in reversing the procedure, returning an invisible gorilla to visibility. Sebastian becomes infatuated with Linda again, but, unbeknownst to him, she has become involved with Matt.
Instead of reporting his success to the military, Sebastian lies to an oversight committee, which includes his mentor Howard Kramer, telling them he is close but needs more time. He convinces part of the team to go into human testing without military authorization, keeping the rest in the dark. The procedure is successful, and Sebastian turns completely invisible. He enjoys sneaking around the lab in order to scare and prank his co-workers, one of which involves molesting Sarah. The team becomes concerned that Sebastian is taking these pranks too far. The procedure to return him to visibility fails, and he is almost killed.
Sebastian is quarantined in the laboratory due to his condition, and the other researchers construct a latex mask for him to wear around the lab. With the constant testing done to him and being unable to cope with the isolation, he defies instructions, leaves the building and returns to his apartment. Once there, he quickly returns to his old habit of spying on his neighbor as she undresses – but this time realizes that he has the power and the freedom to take his voyeurism to the next step. Aroused by seeing her naked, he sneaks into the woman's apartment after she takes a shower. Sebastian follows her to the bedroom, where he disrobes and brutally rapes her. Linda warns Sebastian that if he leaves again, she and Matt will tell the committee about the experiment. Ignoring their threat, Sebastian assembles a device that runs a video loop of his heat signature in his quarters. He leaves the lab again and spies on Linda and Matt, becoming enraged when he sees them about to have sex. He then smashes their bedroom window, and though the two lovers almost immediately suspect Caine as the culprit, the looped video feed immediately diverts any suspicion from him. Becoming increasingly unstable, Sebastian later kills a dog being used as a lab animal in a fit of rage.
The team discovers they have been watching a recording, and Sebastian has been leaving the lab without their knowledge. Linda and Matt go to Kramer's house and confess their experiments. After they leave, Kramer attempts to alert the military. Having followed Linda and Matt to the house, Sebastian cuts off Kramer's phone connection, then drowns him in his swimming pool. The next day, Sebastian waits until the whole team is inside the lab before he disables the phones and elevator codes except for his own. The rest of the team congregates and decides to hunt Sebastian down and subdue him. At the same time, he begins to murder the team members one by one, with Janice being his first victim after falling behind the others.
Linda and the others hide in the lab, while Matt and Carter take tranquilizer guns to hunt for Sebastian using thermography goggles. Sebastian mortally wounds Carter before getting into a fight with Matt. Linda saves Matt. Sebastian then kills Sarah and Frank, and locks an injured Matt and Linda in the freezer, leaving them to die. Linda constructs an electromagnet using a defibrillator to open the door, then gathers materials to assemble a flamethrower. Meanwhile, Sebastian builds a makeshift bomb that will destroy the facility after he leaves using explosive chemicals and a centrifuge; he destroys the keyboard so that nobody can stop the machine.
Just as Sebastian enters the elevator, Linda fires the flamethrower at him. Badly burned but still alive, Sebastian escapes and the two fight. Before Sebastian can kill Linda, Matt strikes him with a crowbar. Sebastian recovers and approaches Matt and Linda from behind with the crowbar, but Matt deflects the blow, throwing Sebastian into a nearby circuit box, shocking him and rendering him partially visible. Linda and Matt find the bomb, but cannot stop the timer. They climb up a ladder in the elevator shaft but the injured Sebastian grabs Linda's ankle. He pulls her off the ladder and onto the top of the elevator. Sebastian asks Linda for one last kiss for old times' sake, so while they kiss, Linda disconnects the elevator cables, causing the partially visible Sebastian to fall to his death down the shaft as the bomb explodes. Linda and Matt emerge from the burning lab and emergency personnel take them away in an ambulance.

Cast

  • Elisabeth Shue as Linda McKay, Sebastian's ex-girlfriend and co-worker who now has a relationship with Matt. Sebastian initially remains oblivious to this.
  • Kevin Bacon as Dr. Sebastian Caine, an ambitious molecular biologist who has developed a serum that can render the subject invisible. He is the main antagonist.
  • Josh Brolin as Dr. Matthew "Matt" Kensington, Linda's new boyfriend and co-worker to both her and Sebastian.
  • Kim Dickens as Dr. Sarah Kennedy, the feisty and rational veterinarian of the team who disapproves of the animal testings being done and has a strong dislike for Sebastian.
  • Greg Grunberg as Carter Abbey, an emergency medical technician.
  • Joey Slotnick as Frank Chase, a laboratory technician.
  • as Janice Walton, a laboratory technician.
  • William Devane as Dr. Howard Kramer, Sebastian's former mentor turned boss.
  • Rhona Mitra as Sebastian's Neighbor
  • Pablo Espinosa as Ed, the security guard working at the lab.
  • Margot Rose as Martha Kramer, Howard's wife
  • Tom Woodruff Jr. as the in-suit performer of Isabelle the Gorilla, a gorilla that was used in the invisibility experiments.
  • Gary A. Hecker as the vocal effects of Isabelle the Gorilla.

    Production

Development

Following the multi-layered and controversial Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven wanted to tone down the levels of sex and violence in his next film, aiming to make a more "conventionally commercial blockbuster". Approximately $50 million of the film's $95 million budget was reserved for visual effects work, which was primarily worked on by Sony Pictures Imageworks and Tippett Studio. Of the 560 visual effects shots in the film, approximately two-thirds were worked on by SPI and the remaining third by Tippett Studio. Verhoeven also storyboarded most of the film, as he had done with all of his American films after experiencing trouble coordinating the action of Flesh+Blood. He maintains that over 90% of the film is how he storyboarded it, as it was expensive if he decided to change a camera movement.
William Goldman says he was sent the script which he thought was "terrible... But I thought if the special effects worked, it could be a very, very exciting and different movie, and I’d never done special effects so I thought that could be interesting." He met with Verhoeven and realised the director liked the script but the studio wanted Goldman to rewrite it; the director said he would ignore anything Goldman did. "So, basically, I started rewriting for a director, knowing he wouldn’t like anything that I was rewriting," said Goldman in 2000. "I haven’t seen the movie, but I gather it sucks although the special effects are terrific. I’ll never know if it could have been saved."

Filming

The film was shot in chronological order, partially due to the fact that the laboratory set would be physically blown up near the end of the story, a sequence that was captured by 14 cameras at various angles. Principal photography began on April 16, 1999. Six weeks into filming, Elisabeth Shue tore her Achilles tendon, which shut down production on June 25 for over seven weeks. At one point, producers considered replacing her; however, shooting resumed on August 18, 1999, and ran until February 4, 2000, following her recovery.
Hollow Man was one of very few films allowed to shoot directly in front of The Pentagon building, with Verhoeven expressing surprise that the script was approved, because of the themes of the United States Government commissioning scientific experiments into making living beings invisible. Many of the location scenes were shot in and around Washington, D.C., with a restaurant set also being constructed in a building overlooking the U.S. Capitol. The laboratory scenes were shot at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California; the elevator shaft used in the film's climax was built onto the side of the studio's parking garage.
A thermal imaging camera was employed for scenes showing "invisible" animals or Sebastian following his transformation and the unsuccessful attempt to restore him to visibility; the same technique was used for characters when they look through thermal goggles. As Isabelle was played in part by a man in a gorilla suit, crew members had to stand by and warm the suit with hair dryers in order for the thermal camera to accurately emulate an actual gorilla's warmth.
Despite assumptions that Bacon would not be needed on set except when his character Sebastian is visible, Verhoeven and the crew realized after test footage was shot that he would need to be present to interact with the cast, as "the other actors were stranded in empty space, and the scenes looked stiff, inorganic and unconvincing" without him. Guy Pearce and Edward Norton were also considered for the role of Sebastian before Bacon was chosen, in part for his "ability to be both charming and diabolical". At the time of Hollow Mans release, Bacon recounted a "bad morning" on which, among other mishaps, he read a story in the press that suggested Robert Downey Jr. had been offered the film's title role.