Review of Hollow Man

Introduction

When I first saw the trailers for Hollow Man in the cinema - it looked like a film that had potential. I`m a fan of director Paul Verhoeven`s other movies which include Total Recall, Robocop and Starship Troopers, so the prospect of him turning his hand to some sci-fi horror was quite appealing.

To summarise – Kevin Bacon leads a team of military scientists running a secret project to make people invisible by “phase change” and then bring them back to normal. Making primates invisible is easy, getting them back is not, but when they eventually succeed, Bacon decides to make himself the first human subject. However, the cell formula that makes primates visible again does not work with humans and Bacon cannot get back to normal. Whilst his team work around the clock to find the correct formula, Bacon has plenty of fun, put eventually he finds that being invisible isn’t as good as he thought...

Video

Video is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and as you would expect from a big-budget special effects movie made last year is of very high quality, with no problems evident.

Almost all scenes of the film include computer-generated effects – and these are fantastic. The opening transformation where the gorilla is brought back to normal is stunning, and like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Similarly, the sequence where Kevin Bacon is first made invisible and also the failed attempt to bring him back are both excellent.

Other notable effects include the swimming sequence, and Bacon appearing through the mist. When he’s walking around the lab with his mask on (which is hollow) the effects are unnervingly eerie!

Audio

Sound comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 and is excellent. The opening scene where one of the scientists walks through the room full of animals is quite something, with various animal noises coming from all directions.

Throughout the rest of the film, effects and incidental noises are well used, creating a very good atmosphere. The score is also very appropriate for the film and is well used.

Dialogue is always clear and understandable.

Features

Hollow Man has a very generous extra feature count, however, quantity does not equal quality.

First of all the main “behind-the-scenes” featurette is an exercise in backslapping tedium punctuated by clips of the film and offers nothing of interest.

The numerous other featurettes aren’t much better – they’re all too short, not especially interesting and again feature members of the cast/crew blowing each other’s trumpets.

On top of that there is a commentary, trailers, bios and three deleted scenes.

Conclusion

Overall, Hollow Man had much promise and whilst enjoyable it ultimately offers nothing new. The film starts off well, with a superb effects sequence where a gorilla is brought back, and the initial period of Bacon’s invisibility is pretty good. However, it soon degenerates into voyeurism with Bacon touching up female colleagues and spying on naked women etc. There’s also an extremely distasteful scene where a dog gets killed – I’ve no objection to any amount of violence aimed towards people in horror films, but am not happy to see animals involved.

The main problem is that the second half of the film follows a completely standard horror film plot – crazed man kills off a group of people one by one in a variety of ways. Basically, it’s just Scream, Friday the 13th, Halloween or any number of other films with an invisible bad guy.

The cast are good, and all of them play their parts well, but ultimately the human actors play second fiddle to the computer-generated effects, which are quite superb. Sound is also very good, with excellent use made of the soundstage.

There are a large amount of extras, but I found them to be of little interest, mainly consisting of backslapping exercises and extended movie clips.

At the end of the day, this is standard horror material, with the added twist of invisibility. We’ve seen everything else before.