Plot
An experiment to create invisible
soldiers goes wrong when the subject, Michael Griffin, quickly begins to
deteriorate both physically and mentally. He escapes and goes looking for a
buffer - a serum designed to slow down his death and stop him from rotting. His
search leads him to scientist Maggie Dalton but she is given police protection
for her own safety after Griffin kills one of her fellow team members. On the
run from the invisible man, Dalton and Detective Frank Turner must battle an
enemy that they can't see.
Review
Hollow Man was a decent time waster, ably
lead by the always-reliable Kevin Bacon, helmed by the great Paul Verhoeven and
containing some decent special effects. But sequel-worthy? I don't think so.
What bothers me with sequels like this is that the originals were pretty big
budget films filled with top drawer effects and an A-list cast so what hope do
these straight-to-DVD films have of recreating the same feel with a lower
budget, worse special effects and bargain basement actors? Not much is the
correct answer!
Perhaps I'm being too harsh on Hollow Man II. It's not exactly Malibu Shark
Attack or Ghoulies IV and I didn't feel bored or roll my eyes in disgust whilst
watching it. But there are some major problems with the film and it's just a
total waste of the invisible man idea. He's not even the main character in this
one which is a bit of a bummer as the film focuses more on the detective and
female scientist (hence the reason why his name is presented as "and Christian
Slater" on the front cover). Even this is a tiresome retread of many sci-fi
films with the military creating some form of weapon (man or monster) and it
is accidentally freed to cause chaos. So the military attempts to stop it and
cover everything up. Yadda yadda ya.....you've seen it before. There's little in
the way of back story to this invisible man. In the original, Bacon's character
at least had plenty of human scenes to let us get to know the character. Here
the guy is already a complete psycho to begin with so his degeneration into a
killing machine doesn't exactly take a big leap of the imagination.....and he's
already invisible too! So bang goes the money shot of the transformation scene.
Christian Slater steps into the
role of the doomed invisible man this time and at least Bacon had some screen
time in human form in the original. Slater hardly appears at all here and it's
mainly just voiceover work he does. The rest of the cast is filled up with
plenty of unknowns whose sole job is to pretend that they are acting in front of
an invisible man. Since he hardly appears in flesh form, it's a no-brainer that
most of his "screen time" is taken up with characters talking to spaces where
he's supposed to be. His voice isn't even that imposing either so I don't know
why he was cast! The special effects aren't particularly great but there's not
an awful lot of them. At least the finale has two invisible men fighting each
other in the rain so it's easy to see where the majority of the cash was spent.
One of the problems with both of
the Hollow Man films is that neither have really delved into much depth about
what everyday people like you or I would do if we were invisible. There are so
many ethical and philosophical angles to this dilemma but the films aren't
sophisticated or intelligent enough to deal with this angle. Yes there is a dark
side to everyone and so we'd do the silly, juvenile things like spy on people we
fancied, maybe have some fun by playing tricks on unsuspecting strangers, etc.
but what about putting it to good use? Going undercover and solving crimes
maybe? Helping out businesses by acting as a lab rat for security systems?
Neither film really touches upon this subject, instead letting the invisible men
just run with revenge plots to get even with people who want to shut down their
experiments or use it for military purposes. Being invisible would be a lot of
red-blooded males' fantasies even if they wouldn't like to admit it. So if this
film wasn't going to be all serious and question the morality of being
invisible, then why not take it to the other extreme and go all gratuitous?
Horror films shouldn't find violence, sex and gore as essentials but many a crap
b-movie has salvaged itself by featuring boobs and bloods. At least you know the
director knows what some horror fans want to see! There are some token kills
from the invisible man (at some points this does resemble a slasher film) and
there's even a token breast shot but it's just wasted because the rest of the
film is just filled with recycled garbage full of the usual sci-fi clichés of a
man-made weapon going on the loose.
Verdict
Hollow Man II is a feeble
sequel with no fresh slant or ideas on the invisible man story. It's content to
churn out the same stuff we've already seen and we've already disliked. Being
invisible should never be this dull.
