For me, Hollow Man was one of the most highly anticipated films of the summer. After all, it featured one of the best coming attraction trailers of the year, stars a very underrated Kevin Bacon, and was directed by Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Total Recall) a master at the technical aspects of film making. Alas, Verhoeven has never excelled at picking screenplays with decent dialogue ( see Showgirls), and certainly, Hollow Man is further proof of that fact. Kevin Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, a scientist who, along with the help of his dreadfully one dimensional crew, creates a serum that renders it's user invisible. Of course, bringing the subject back doesn't come as easy.

Things go wrong when the government tells Caine they will terminate his project unless he delivers immediate results. This prompts Caine to take the serum himself. While invisible, he realizes the unlimited power he actually has, and uses it to full effect. Let's start with the special effects. They are truly breathtaking, and definitely some of the best I've seen in a long time.

The scene in which Caine becomes invisible for the first time is mind blowing. There are also several moments in which we see Caine's shape revealed such as when he's dripping with water or appearing in smoke. Verhoeven directs the effects scenes in this film with a graceful flow and slam bang energy that rarely give you a chance to breathe. He also injects a a small dose of his trademark sexual perversity.

Unfortunately, what starts off as a strong morality tale, slowly degenerates into what is essentially a big budget slasher film with terrible acting and absolutely awful dialogue. This works in some of Verhoeven's other films (such as Starship Troopers) because they are dealing with a lot of satire, but Hollow Man is meant to be taken a little more seriously.

Even more disappointing, the entire second half of the film takes place in the lab compound, while Sebastian picks off his crew of fellow scientists one by one. Like What Lies Beneath, Hollow Man becomes so calculated in it's execution that nothing seems surprising. It would have been nice to see Caine go out into the real world and maybe go through some kind of psychological transformation. As it stands, Caine is already sort of a creepy egomaniac to begin with, so no descent into evil really takes place. And although there is a motive for him to kill members of his crew, I never really believed he was capable of doing so.

Finally, towards the end of the film, it's as if Caine begins to exhibit superhuman strength, rebounding from many things that would surely kill a man instantly. This further takes his character into Jason VorheesFreddy Krueger territory.

Hollow Man is also a blatant waste of talent with very little quality time given to the likes of Josh Brolin (The Goonies), and Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas). Bacon really gets into his character and was apparently put through a living hell to bring some of these images to the screen. Even in the invisibility sequences, he was actually on set and matted out of the film in post production. This is also not a film without it's creepy moments.

When Caine is covered only by a mask, and you are able to see right through his eye slits, it's downright chilling. Alas, Hollow Man is nothing more than "eye candy" thanks to an almost, if you'll pardon the pun, invisible screenplay. Instead of giving us an interesting character study and tapping into that fear of whether or not were really alone while sitting home on a rainy night, we get a B-movie thriller with high caliber effects. Hollow Man reminded me of a similar but better film John Carpenter's underrated Memoirs of an Invisible Man. It may not have had the same hardware, but it definitely had a better story.