Hollow Man series

(In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) The first Hollow Man was high-end trash exploitation, with a big budget and Paul Verhoeven to make even a disappointing psycho-thriller feel polished. So, there’s something appropriate in having the made-for-DVD sequel (as was they were called then) embrace its trashy nature by settling for an equally exploitative script, substandard special effects and low-budget shortcuts. Christian Slater stars as a soldier turned invisible who (inevitably, in those kinds of horror thrillers) turns psychotic and violent. While Slater is the top-billed star, much of the film is spent watching Peter Facinelli protect a scientist (Laura Regan) against the attacks of the invisible psycho soldier. The plot is not as polished as the first film but is arguably more interesting with a bunch of twists and turns. On the other hand, the budget for this instalment was low: special effects are used sparingly, and the big showcase sequence is, if I’m not mistaken, taken straight from the first film. It’s bad in the ways that mid-2000s straight-to-DVD films were bad, but not completely unwatchable. If someone can magically exchange this script for the polish and production values of the first film and vice versa, we may have something more interesting.