Synopsis & Film Review Paul Verhoeven is already famous for his films with the thriller genre Hollow Man 2000, Dangerous Transparent Man

Paul Verhoeven is already famous for his films with the thriller genre, in 2000, he again showed another work through the film Hollow Man. The film, whose screenplay was written by Andrew W. Marlowe, stars several well-known stars such as Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin and many more.

This film tells the story of a scientist who develops a serum that can make its user invisible. His ambitious nature makes the scientist voluntarily make himself a guinea pig which ends badly without the supervisor’s permission.

Synopsis
Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) is an ambitious molecular biologist who has developed a serum that can make subjects invisible. The serum will be used for military needs. The serum project involves her ex-boyfriend and Sebastian’s best friends.

They are Linda (Elisabeth Shue), Matt (Josh Brolin), Sarah (Kim Dickens), Janice (Mary Randle), Carter (Greg Grunberg), and Frank (Joey Slotnik). The team successfully completed the project, they were able to bring a gorilla back from sight to sight.

This success was not immediately reported to the military who oversaw the project for Sebastian and the team. Sebastian even lied by saying that the serum was finished but he needed time to make sure everything was really perfect. He used this reason because he wanted to try the serum on humans.

Not alone, Sebastian invites his entire team to test the serum on him. Although initially received resistance, in the end the trial was carried out without military permission. Once the serum is injected, the procedure is successful, and Sebastian is completely invisible. With his invisible form, he likes to prank his friends in the lab.

Sebastian also abused Sarah, so everyone was worried that Sebastian would go further so they carried out the procedure for returning Sebastian’s form, but that failed and even almost killed Sebastian. Waiting for the formula to be fixed, Sebastian uses a latex mask.

This was done so that the team could find out where Sebastian was. The experimentation continues to annoy Sebastian and he escapes from the lab to go to his apartment. After he finished picking up his things, instead of going home, Sebastian went to the residence of his female neighbor and raped her.

Upon returning to the lab, Linda, who knew that Sebastian had left, immediately warned her to remain silent while they tried to recover her, if Sebastian violated, Linda & Matt would report all of Sebastian’s experiments. Not following orders, Sebastian leaves the lab and spies on Linda & Matt.

Apart from that, Sebastian also installed a video device to spy on other teams, which Sebatian’s team eventually found out. Feeling that things are getting worse, Linda and Matt go to the residence of Kramer (William Devane), who is Sebastian’s mentor. Hearing this, Kramer immediately informed the military.

Immediately the whereabouts of Sebastian was hunted down. Knowing that he will be caught, Sebastian plans to kill his entire team to keep his mouth shut. Once the rest of his team is in the underground lab to work, Sebastian immediately deactivates the telephone lines and lift access other than his own.

Knowing they are locked up in the lab, Linda, Matt, Sarah, Janice, Carter and Frank get together and agree to knock out Sebastian. But hunting for Sebastian is not easy, especially since Sebastian’s form is invisible. Instead of successfully immobilizing Sebastian, Sebastian starts killing his team one by one.

Janice died first, while Linda and the others hid while Carter was assisted by Matt looking for Sebastian using thermography glasses. Unfortunately Sebastian realized this and injured Carter and attacked Matt. Luckily Matt was saved by Linda and ran away while Sarah and Frank were killed.

The hide-and-seek action takes place, Linda and Matt are successfully paralyzed and put in the freezer so they suffocate to death. Linda is not at her wits end, she manages to open the freezer door with a defibrillator, then immediately assembles a flamethrower to kill Sebastian. At the same time, Sebastian builds a homemade bomb.

The bomb will blow up the laboratory so that evidence and other things related to the serum project are destroyed along with his team. When he was about to escape by taking the elevator, Linda managed to spit fire at Sebastian. Sebastian manages to avoid and beats Linda up.

When Sebastian was about to kill Linda, Matt came to help by attacking Sebastian with a crowbar until he fell. Taking advantage of this, Linda and Matt immediately ran away from the laboratory, just as Sebastian realized and was about to stab Matt with the crowbar earlier.

Luckily, Matt managed to avoid and brush off Sebastian’s attack, causing Sebastian to stagger and get electrocuted from a circuit box that was short-circuited due to being hit by Sebastian’s body. This made Sebastian recover and his body partially visible again. When Sebastian was weak, Linda and Matt immediately searched for the bomb that Sebastian had made.

They attempted to deactivate the bomb, but failed. They finally escape through the elevator shaft before the bomb explodes. Unexpectedly, Sebastian, who was injured, still manages to grab Linda’s leg, causing her to fall into an elevator that doesn’t work. Threatened, Linda finally severs the elevator cable and drops Sebastian with her.

Sebastian died in his own lab, while Linda and Matt managed to get out of the burning lab, firefighters and the medical team immediately helped Linda and Matt, they were immediately taken to an ambulance.

Special Effects
This 2000 film can be said to be quite reliable in making special effects for the character of Dr. Sebastian who became a hollow human. The production team used many techniques, even Kevin Bacon, the actor, had to shoot twice for the version with Kevin on-cam and without Kevin.

The most interesting scene is when the serum is put into Sebastian’s body and we can see the internal structure of Sebastian’s body such as veins, bones until he finally disappears. It’s like studying anatomy. The effect was even nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects

Moral message
The character of Sebastian in this film teaches us one important thing, namely when someone has power, that person’s true nature will come out. Either he will get worse or use his powers to help others. In Sebastian’s case he did the worst thing a scientist could do with his creation.

Sebastian, who initially really wanted to help the military for their needs, instead used the serum he created and deviated from the mission. He raped, attacked people, killed, caused chaos just because of his own interests which he did not want to give to others.

Sequel
This film has a sequel, namely Hollow Man 2 which was released in 2006. The point is the same as the first film which targets the invisible human so that he does not do things that harm many people. Again, the serum is funding from the US government for military purposes.

But the second film was not as successful as the first film. Until 2020, a film called The Invisible Man appeared with a similar plot but different execution. Even though this film has nothing to do with the Hollow Man film (the 2020 film is based on the novel of the same name released in 1897), many people still compare it.

The Hollow Man film, which lasts 112 minutes, actually has a director’s cut version that lasts slightly longer at 119 minutes. This film received a lot of bad reviews but managed to gross up to $ 190 million and received an Oscar nomination. Bacaterus himself gave this film a score of 3/5.