Shocktober 2026 - Hollow Man (2000)
“You know what, Matt? It's amazing what you can do... when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror any more.” - Dr Sebastian Caine
When I was putting this programme together, it struck me that you can’t really have an alt take on tropes and monsters without showing some love to The Invisible Man. (Well, you could – but it wouldn’t be right.) I had some options to choose from, including John Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man, but ultimately, I went in the direction of this underappreciated Paul Verhoven movie from the turn of the century.
Invisibility has intrigued me for a long time – since I was a child, watching the short lived David McCallum action series The Invisible Man on Sunday afternoons in (I think) 1972. Seeing Claude Rains in the 1933 Universal film of the same name just fuelled the intrigue – and the aforementioned Memoirs of an Invisible Man really ignited my imagination. All these films had of course an invisible protagonist, as did the more recent remake of the story in 2020 – and they’re all triumphs of special effects. But they also detail the downsides of invisibility, for example if you eat or drink, then what you’ve consumed isn’t invisible, and can clearly be seen in your stomach. Likewise, you’d constantly be dazzled nto blindness because even though you can blink – your eyelids are transparent. I’ve read somewhere that invisibility would be completely impractical because as you can’t see your limbs, you’d find it impossible to gauge distances to pick anything up. As you couldn’t see your feet – even walking might be problematic.
The popular notion is that it’d drive the invisible subject insane very quickly. Such is the case with Dr Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) in Hollow Man.
Caine is a genius. With his team, he is developing a serum for the military that can render a person invisible. However, Caine is also a narcissist with a God complex. He is confident and stable when things go his way, but prone to tantrums when they don’t. He has been in a relationship with team member Sarah (Elizabeth Shue) and though he knows she has moved on - he doesn’t know she’s moved on to Matt (Josh Brolin) another member of his team.
As the film starts, his project is at the stage of being tested on animals. Invisibility itself isn’t a problem, bringing the subject back alive is. Until the breakout day they reverse the process and successfully restore the visibility of a test gorilla.
Caine out-and-out lies to an oversight committee having egotistically decided it’s not time for them to know how far along he now is. Human testing is next, and Caine has already decided he’s going to try the serum on himself, stay invisible in the underground lab complex for three days and then be restored.
Now, in order to be injected with the serum, Caine has to be naked – and I’ve seen far too much of that man’s junk in various stages of invisibility in this film. (Just sayin’.)
So, now invisible, Caine is delirious with his success. He starts off by pranking his colleagues, but very quickly begins to spy on them and shortly after, sexually assaults team member Sarah (Kim Dickens) while she sleeps.
On the third day, the restoration stage fails and Caine needs to be quarantined in the complex. The team create a latex mask and gloves for him to wear. But Caine is becoming crazier by the day and decides to slip out, he drives back to his apartment. There, he catches sight of his attractive neighbour (Rhona Mitra), and removing his mask and gloves, rapes her. On his return, the team know he left and Linda threatens to tell the oversight committee if he leaves again.
He loops a recording of the heat detecting camera keeping him under surveillance so that he can go on another nocturnal spree. This time, he spies on Linda and sees her with Matt. Enraged, he kills a dog back at the lab. The team now realise he’s been leaving again and follow through, reporting what’s happening to the oversight committee chairman – not realising Caine is in the room, and murders the chairman in his swimming pool.
The next day, they find themselves trapped in the complex with an insane and invisible Caine, who has deleted their security codes and intends to kill the entire team to keep his invisibility a secret. To this end, he has already killed four team members and rigged a homemade bomb out of lab equipment. But the ever resourceful Linda has built a flamethrower. They fail to disarm the bomb, so the lab goes up and a semi-visible but badly burned Caine is sent crashing down an elevator shaft to die with his secrets.
I remember being bowled over by the truly groundbreaking effects in this film when I saw it for the first time, 26 years ago. Particularly the scenes where invisibility is gradually happening, and the veins, and organs and gradually revealed before they too disappear, showing the layers underneath. The detail is amazing, and still is, all these years later. But I still feel sorry for whoever had to spend time animating the CGI insides of Bacon’s ...sausage.
Next time, how about we kick off the final three for this year’s Shocktober with zombies? You’ll meet a normal guy - and his ex who won’t stay dead.
Until then…
Don't forget the Piercing the Veil Shocktober Special at this link.