Kevin Bacon is a fine actor, I like him, I really do. He makes a good hero and villain, and in this one he plays the villain. He plays Dr. Caine, who turns out to be this reckless, arrogant mad scientist who breaks rules to break ground. Fine, this is a good character that we can follow. His ultimate dream, project if you will, is to create invisibility. So after many animal experiments, he decides to test it, with him as the guinea pig. Well it works, he's invisible, but he can't change back. And as it turns out, he doesn't want to.

This is good, but where the potential is dropped is when Sebastian Caine goes berserk. There really is no reason established in this movie why he suddenly turns to evil and does these murderous, mischievous deeds. The question "why" kept popping into my head during this movie. I suppose it could be answered that he loved the power of invisibility and never wanted to share it or give it up to anyone else. Or his envy and jealousy got the better of him. But this didn't work for me, there needed to be a better reason on why he snapped.

Elisabeth Shue was Sebastian's girlfriend, now is his best buddy's girlfriend, which is where the envy and jealousy comes from. What I felt would've been better to create the motive was not have the movie start out with Shue being the ex to Sebastian but to have them still be together. Then have her dump him for the better man. Soap operish, I know, but at least it gives us a better motive.

Well, you already know the plot, he goes berserk towards the second half of the film. He molests some pretty young woman in her apartment, then becomes aggressive with Shue, he's rude and utterly evil. Then he decides he's sick of everyone and he's going to kill them all. So one by one he hunts each of the team members who work on his project down. Again, this all came on suddenly. This film lacks understandment to why Sebastian mutated from this over zealous scientiest into this demonic madman. He just turns with no real motive. The plot would be fine if it just gives us a clear and definate reason to why Sebastian turns into this villain.

I thought the special effects were OK, maybe a bit over done. When he starts becoming invisible, we see his muscles and then his skeleton as he's transforming. This didn't look very real, it is so clearly recognizable as computer generated effects. It looked more cartoon like and therefore I wasn't very impressed with the transformation. I did like it whenever somebody threw something on him to visualize him. That seemed real and quite believable.

But you know what bugged me the most about this movie? Despite the sudden switch in Sebastian, despite the failure of potential to enhance the plot, the real issue with this movie is that it's just like all the other corny horror movies out there. It's got the corny lines, the cheap suspense, the typical ending, and the typical "take forever to die monster" formula.

I mean come on, how many horror movies have we seen where it takes forever for the bad guy to die? First Shue torches him with a blow torch, practically reducing him to standing ash. But yet, he's as strong as ever and still alive and still standing! No freaking way! Then he gets electrocuted and yet he's still alive and strong as ever! Then he climbs up a ladder, all burnt and fried, trying to get Shue only to get torched again this time for good. I mean, how corny. Just die, man.

If this movie had ended it with a more thought provoking, dramatic, maybe even sympathizing fashion we might appreciate this movie a whole lot more. But because it had to end with cheese, this film does not separate itself from the 1950's "screamers" or the 1980's "blood and guts" horror flicks. In the end, this film leaves us unsatisfied because I think most of us saw the potential for this movie, but the director stupidely turns it into a horror movie that we can see any time we want on the USA channel. Which after only three years old, that is Hollow Man's new home...the TV. What a hollow movie.

Grade: C-