The Hollow Man is an Entertaining and Scary Sci - Fi Tale of a Man Wanting Power

 

Credit to Google

I finally got to watch the Hollow Man, and I cannot believe that critics bashed this movie so badly. In my personal opinion, this movie deserves a huge cult following, all because of the main villain in this film. His character sells the plot, and makes the horror concept of becoming invisible so terrifying to think about. 

This movie takes on the story of the invisible man concept, turning it into a story of a man who never deserved to have this kind of power. He uses his power for the evilest purposes, taking advantage of others to ensure his dominance and order. 

And yes, there are several flaws in this movie that don’t exactly make any sense, but these plot holes are so easy to overlook, when it comes to the stacked cast, and the evil plans of the main villain. 

Hollow Man follows the story of a man named Sebastien Caine that wants to find a way to become invisible. 

Credit to Hollow Man (2000) — IMDb

A doctor named Dr. Caine is in charge of a government project that is now on limited time. He has his own team, that all treat each other like friends, and he is determined to find a way to become invisible. The team uses animals as their lab rats, and the majority of these animals are currently invisible. Dr. Caine was able to figure out how to make this crazy phenomenon happen, but he struggles to find a way to ‘not make them invisible again.’

The team finally figures out the formula to make one of the animals visible again, and they plot to let the government know about their successful findings. Dr. Caine brings his ex — girlfriend, Linda, and a colleague that he struggles to get along with, named Matt, who is secretly now dating Linda. 

Linda and Matt both get pissed off at Dr. Caine when he suddenly refuses to not mention that they were successful with their project to the government. Dr. Caine tells the duo that he is afraid that he will lose the project for good, and now wants to go straight to ‘human testing.’

He offers to use himself as a guinea pig, and the team decide to go ahead with this insane decision. 

Dr. Caine becomes invisible, and shows his true evil nature to the group and the outside world. 

Credit to What Critics Said About ‘Hollow Man’

Dr. Caine begins to have fun with his invisibility, once he realizes that the group is going to struggle to change him back. He decides to move the building secretly to avoid the team coming after him, and goes back home. He notices his neighbor across his apartment, and decides to go and torture this poor woman. 

This part is by far the scariest part in the film. 

And what’s even more terrifying, is since the beginning of the film, we get a glimpse into Dr. Caine’s dark side. He had already shown his interest in his neighbor in the beginning, and he also had even flirted with some of his female colleagues that were a part of his team, including Linda. 

Once he becomes invisible, he also starts to mess with all three of them in disturbing ways. Dr. Caine was secretly a predator, who was given a power that finally made him act on his sick fantasies. 

He ends up becoming even more unhinged once he finds out that Linda and Matt betrayed him. 

Credit to Hollow Man 15 Years Later — Cryptic Rock

Linda and Matt both realize that they should have told the government about their project findings, and they go forward to let the main leader behind the project know. Dr. Caine finds out and gets angry, and kills the leader, and then proceeds to start hunting each of his team members one by one. He traps them in the building, and the team battle for survival in the last 30 minutes of the movie. 

The movie becomes a huge bloodbath, each member dying in horrific ways. I could not believe how brutal these kills were, and this entire scene really caught me off guard, since we hadn’t gotten any hint of how gory this movie was going to become later. It was insane to think that he used to work with these people, but he started to see them as deadweight once he snapped. Linda and Matt are the only ones left at the end of the movie. 

They fight Dr. Caine to the death, and both of them barely survive the battle. They lose the project in the process, due to Dr. Caine blowing up the facility to cover up his crimes. He finally dies once they push him into the destruction of his own project, a fitting end to this monster. 

The movie ends with Linda and Matt getting rescued, both of them exhausted and severely injured. 

I think this movie is so entertaining, and even though I kept questioning the lack of security for the facility and wondering why the team kept easily losing their own boss when he would disappear, the story and the great cast are the main selling points of the film. 

It’s pretty easy to look past the flaws of this movie, and I consider this horror film to be a great B movie.