I watched X-Men: First Class the other day and after seeing Kevin Bacon as the bad guy I suddenly remembered this movie. I remember being terrified of an invisible Kevin Bacon stalking me. I think I was 6 or 7 when I first watched this so don’t judge me.

Hollow Man is about a group of scientists trying to figure out how to turn people invisible for the government’s use. And when they do find out, Sebastian Caine (Bacon) keeps the information to himself so that he can be the first man to turn invisible. He convinces his two colleagues,  Linda McKay (Elisabeth Shue) and Matthew Kensington (Josh Brolin), to let him do so. Though the rest of his team are in the dark about their plan, they are told that they have the government’s green light, which they believe.

They are successful in turning Sebastian invisible but it’s turning him visible that proves to be the problem. After days of being that way, Sebastian kind of loses it. He starts leaving the lab and goes out to torment a girl who lives across the street from him and rapes her.

When the rest of the team finds out that their experiment technically isn’t allowed they are, of course, pissed. But there are more pressing matters. Sebastian doesn’t want to be turned back but Lynda and Matthew have already told Dr. Kramer, played by William Devane, everything. But before the doctor can tell anyone, Sebastian murders him.

Sebastian wants to stay the way he is and to do so, he goes on a murderous rampage on his team, killing them one by one. Of course the most famous live the longest, so Matthew and Linda are the last ones he goes after. When it is finally their turn, Matthew and Sebastian fight it out and Matthew gets injured. Sebastian then traps the two of them in a giant freezer and leaves them to freeze to death. Linda sciences her way out of it and sets them free. So she goes after Sebastian and tries to burn him to death. It works for a while but eventually she runs out of gas. Matthew hits him in the head with a crowbar and they just walk away. But Sebastian planted chemical bombs and now everything’s going boom. They try to escape the exploding lab by climbing up the elevator shaft. As things explode and there is fire everywhere, surprise surprise, Sebastian ain’t dead yet. He tries to grab Linda and they fight on top of the elevator. Obviously, she wins and Sebastian falls to his death into the fiery abyss.

I have one question, why are people always so stupid in movies like this? Did they really have to disobey protocol? Didn’t they think that maybe there are severe psychological effects that might turn him evil? And why oh why did they just leave him? He just got hit in the head, did you really think he was dead?

Kevin Bacon and Josh Brolin were okay – they brought their usual stuff to the movie. It’s just that the movie wasn’t very good. And don’t get me started on Elisabeth Shue, she only had three facial expressions: sassy, sexy, and scared. But she sometimes did some of it at the same time – at least she showed a little variety.

I don’t know who the director is or who wrote the screenplay, I can’t even be bothered to research it. (Sandy: Paul Verhoeven and Andrew W. Marlowe, respectively. You’re welcome.) I can’t imagine why I was ever scared of this movie. The only reason I sat through the whole thing is because I was hoping it would get interesting. I was wrong. The movie somehow made the idea of turning invisible seem boring and unappealing. Now I feel hollow because I wasted two hours of my life on this. (Sandy: Wait. He dies?!?)