Hollow Man 2000 takes the horror trope of not seeing the monster to a whole new level

Blender Dumbass
September 29, 2025

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Before Kevin Bacon played a much more complex man with a psychological sexual abnormality in 2004's The Woodsman, he played a man with a psychological sexual abnormality in 2000's Hollow Man. Where the fetish is voyeurism and the crime is ghostly rape. You kind of know it is a Paul Verhoeven movie from this description.

Hollow Man even though dated by today's standards, is a visual effects marvel of a movie. The anatomical detail required to make some of the shots in the film is insane. Like we don't just get a man become invisible just like that. We see him slowly melt away. First the skin, than the muscles and then the bones. With every anatomical detail in between. That must have been a hell of a rig to animate. And that must have been a hell of a rig to animate back in 2000, on the 2000's hardware. Even though we don't have global illumination, bounce light, or even ambient occlusion yet, the renders are immaculate.

Speaking of non-transformation shots, which the movie has a lot of, the film is very smart actually. As far as my VFX brain can tell, the shots where he is interacting with stuff are simple, yet effective. For example, where he is wearing the mask, it is just probably Kevin Bacon wearing the mask. And then a team of VFX artists just render the inside of said mask, which is probably just a basic mesh with a texture. Removing something from the shot is way easier than adding something in. All you need is a clean-plate and a bit of roto-scoping. Sometimes you need to add shit back in. Like the back-sides of stuff that would be obscured by Bacon. For that some CGI could be used. And if it is used minimally, the lack of global illumination and other fancy tech is not as noticeable.

Being a Verhoeven picture, the film has a good amount of sexuality in it, yet being a Verhoeven picture where he specifically tried to limit sexuality, you get less sexuality in it, than in something more Verhoeven-like. Like you get a few tits. And there are a few rape scenes. One is straight up ultra-traumatic. The others are more on a lighter, more voyeuristic side. But that's about it.

While the film is lighter on sex, it isn't light on violence. I mean it is a Verhoeven film after all. Like even the transformation scenes ( there are multiple ) are fucking disturbing. But then the film turns into a slasher at one point. And it plays within the realms of a slasher. Like you get people with very nasty fucking wounds.

Generally the film is interesting when it comes to politics. From one side it is Verhoeven criticizing, or satirizing the government, by stating that they might be developing a way to turn a soldier invisible. Which is why Verhoeven was surprised that US government let them film on and near critical US government structures. Like they used the real building of the Pentagon and the real building of the Capitol as backgrounds.

You can say that the film is playing with voyeurism as the central thematic through-line. So if such, the film is about privacy. And the hollow-man is one violating other people's privacy by spying on them, basically, undetected.

But here is the complication, which makes everything so much more interesting. The hollow-man himself has the greatest level of privacy, because he is literally invisible. So is the movie pro-privacy or anti-privacy?

From one side you can even read the film as a meta-commentary of sorts on the "save the kids" bullshit we hear so often now a days from politicians around the world that want to introduce chat control laws to read every message we send. You can argue that those laws are the Hollow-man. They are the creeps spying on us. But you can also say that the creeps are those these laws are trying to defeat. Those people who share images of other people without those other people's consent. The whole reason those laws exist ( as per the official explanation given by the various governments ) is to stop the spread of child pornography. Or in other words, images of children that said children are too ashamed to show to people. So looking at those images is an act of voyeurism. Looking at those images makes you the Hollow-man or the Woods-man. Basically it makes you Kevin Bacon. And if nobody can see you seeing it, you can continue seeing it.

Maybe that is the reason Verhoeven got access to the US government buildings. Maybe the government decided that this would help them sell mass surveillance. If the main villain of the film is an invisible man, people will want more eyes in the sky.

Verhoeven is known to do multi-layered and complex political movies. Look at his other work: Starship Troopers, Total Recall, RoboCop. He knows how to make a movie that asks complex questions and doesn't shy away from nuances. Maybe this is his attempt at looking at privacy, the way Starship Troopers looks at Nazism.

I just written a script ( for my next movie ) which I think is very good. And yet I feel somewhat uneasy about it ( which is one of the reasons I feel it will be a good movie ) because it touches on political subjects I feel strongly about, but it also examines sides I disagree with. As in, the film agrees and disagrees with both sides. This is what I feel Verhoeven did here with Privacy. You have 2 sides to the same argument. And those two sides exist simultaneously. And both of them are correct.

It is as if, the world isn't perfect and there are things that you can't solve. Even in the film itself the scientists are trying to "solve" the problem at first. Then realizing that they can't solve it. And what they need to do is survive. This is why the film turns into a slasher by the end. You have so many things in the world that just don't line up perfectly. Good example: Israel and Palestine. This will never stop. It is not something that you can solve. It is not something that is negotiable. All you can do is survive it.

When it comes to things like privacy you will always have governments trying to take it away. And you always need to push back to survive. And you will always have Kevin Bacon characters being fucking creeps. And outlawing them will not make them go away. It will not stop them. If what they do already breaks the law. And violating privacy is already breaking the law. Making violation of privacy legal for certain purposes, for certain people, will not stop anything. If anything it makes what they are doing more legal. And if you ban the tech with which they achieve privacy, they will just flip you off and gonna keep using it anyway. Because they are already doing something illegal. What will another law change?

The world will always be imperfect. Strong shit, Verhoeven. Strong shit!

Happy Hacking!!!