Paul Verhoeven’s gleeful brutality and sex make films like Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers much more fun, but it ends up making this film feel way more creepy an unpleasant than any goofy sci-fi SFX extravaganza has any right to be. James Whale’s The Invisible Man has it’s titular character slowly descend into madness do to being an outcast with no accountability. He slowly works his way from causing general mischief to joyfully murdering people (even masses of people) for the fun of it. In this, Kevin Bacon’s been invisible for about 5 hours before he starts sexually assaulting and raping people. As if he was an insane rapist the entire time, he just never could figure out a way to get away with it. Which is odd, because he also openly harrasses and abuses women at his work when he’s visible, and they all seem to just accept it as part of who he is.
So few special effects-driven films age well (not that this looks horrible now), but this could have at least been goofy fun if it weren’t so incredibly unpleasant. But Kevin Bacon already feels like a super-villain before he becomes invisible, so it’s less a tale about a descent into madness than a constant exercise in assholery. C-
Martha Marcy Nash and Young 