Whenever the question of superpowers comes up in a conversation, and someone asks what superpowers you'd like to possess, invisibility is inevitably one of the most popular responses. But whereas wishing for virtually any other kind of superhuman power will usually result in benign, if self-serving, means (if I could fly, I could avoid the rush hour crush), the lure of invisibility usually conjures far darker impulses. Who among us has never fantasized about being invisible and hanging out in the girl's locker room? It's an almost primal wish that manifests itself in in our most basic human urges.
So, then why is it so difficult to make a good movie out of this fascinatingly psychological concept?
Director James Whale created the definitive cinematic depiction of the concept in his masterful 1933 feature The Invisible Man, starring a memorably mad Claude Rains as H.G. Wells' power-drunk scientist. The film's visual effects still hold up remarkably well over 70 years later. But since that watershed film, the darker aspects of the concept have been shaved away, first in a series of increasingly disappointing sequels throughout the 30's and 40's, and again in countless films ranging from John Carpenter's limp Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, to the supporting part of the Invisible Man in the wretched The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. So when Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, notorious for his unflinching depictions of brutal violence and explicit sexuality, and the intertwining of the two, announced he was going to film an invisible man thriller, fans of his grand guignol brand of sci-fi thrills and black humor became excited. If there were one man who could peel back the civilized layers on top of the invisibility concept and peer into the ugly layers concealed beneath, it seemed to be Paul Verhoeven.
 In his thriller, Kevin Bacon portrays Sebastian Caine, an egotistical blowhard of a scientist working in a secret lab located beneath a nondescript warehouse structure in Washington, D.C.. He begins work on a government-funded project to create a formula that will turn a human subject invisible, then return him to his visible state with no averse after effects. Sebastian has finally put the final pieces of the puzzle into place, and, in a visually captivating sequence, takes an invisible test animal (a hulking gorilla) and injects the new-and-improved formula into it's veins, which we see forming out of thin air as the formula spreads throughout the gorilla's body. It's a staggering showstopper of a visual effects sequence that manages to tickle a genuine sense of awe in the viewer, the sensation that we're truly viewing something historic and previously unseen unfold before our eyes. Sebastian is thrilled at the accomplishments that he and his team, including his ex-girlfriend Linda McKay (Elisabeth Shue), have brought to fruition, but the military bigwig (William Devane) holding the purse strings on the project is less edified. He demands that the formula be perfected for human use or he'll suspend their funding. Sebastian, elated at his accomplishments and frustrated that his life's work may be snatched away from him, determines that he'll leapfrog across the lengthy process of endless testing and offer himself up as a guinea pig, injecting the unproven formula into his own body. Writhing in a fit of agony, his fellow scientists (including Gary Grunberg, Joey Slotnick, Kim Dickens and Mary Randle) watch in horrified astonishment as his skin and organs appear to peel away, layer by layer, until there's nothing left but the impression of his body on the gurney it rests upon.
 When Sebastian wakes up, he's initially elated both at the success of the experiment and at the power his newly invisible state bestows upon him. At first, he merely jokes around with his fellow scientists, playing hide and seek games and moving around cans of soda. But after an attempt to bring him back to his visible state fails, Sebastian starts to get a bad case of cabin fever mixed with increasingly intimate and disturbing uses of his new powers. Despite having a crude mask fashioned by pouring quick-drying latex over his face, leaving eerie, blank sockets where his eyes used to be, Sebastian still starts to feel the psychological strain of having his very identity stripped away from him. He crudely attempts to re-ignite the lost spark between himself and Linda ("Don't you wanna know what it's like to make it with the invisible man?"), not knowing that she's begun to date her hunky fellow scientist (and Sebastian's rival), Matthew Kensington (Josh Brolin). When Sebastian finally finds out the truth about them, his already fragile state of mind starts to fragment even further. He starts to make secret field trips out of the lab, spying on Linda and Matthew, and peeking in on his hottie neighbor (Rhona Mitra), who frequently parades around half-naked in front of her windows. Soon, Sebastian begins to develop a psychotic hunger for his new "gift", conspiring against his scientist brethren in order to keep his powers a secret and eliminate anyone who has knowledge that can harm him.
 It's here where Verhoeven and screenwriter Andrew W. Marlowe make a crucial, crippling mistake. At this point, we in the audience want desperately to see Sebastian finally let loose to terrorize the general public. Imagine the sinister fun that Verhoeven could have had staging Sebastian fucking around with random strangers on the street, and the suspense that could have been generated as he picked off his fellow scientists one-by-one. Instead, the film collapses in on itself just as we want it to break loose of it's dreary, underground laboratory setting. So, what started off as an intriguing dissection of one man's descent into madness becomes a routine slasher pic that's indistinguishable from countless other genre flicks involving scientists chased through their laboratories by their own traitorous creations (Alien: Resurrection, The Deep Blue Sea, etc.).
What's worse is that Sebastian's invisibility is barely even touched upon in any truly creative ways. Hey, pal, you're invisible, you don't need to sneak up behind people anymore! These scenes only seem to exist to allow the F/X crew to come up with endless variations on how to render visible Sebastian's invisible form. From walking through clouds of foam left behind by a fire extinguisher (neat visual) to getting splattered by a bag of plasma, it's all technically spectacular, but instead we get just a spiffed-up retread of Friday The 13th routines, with the dumb, cannon fodder scientists getting offed in gruesome ways. Gee, think the two most attractive, recognizable actors of the bunch will be the last ones left standing? And despite how neat it is seeing Sebastian's form being revealed by smoke, steam, foam, and blood, why don't any of these substances, y'know, stick to his skin? Is he the Teflon Man? However, the worst is when Verhoeven hammers us over the head with the old "undead killer" cliche, not once, but twice, and expects us to believe that Sebastian can get a full-body burn with a blowtorch, cracked in the noggin with a crowbar, electrocuted (funny, Shue and Brolin are standing in the same puddle of water, and don't get juiced up...), and come back for more. The guy's invisible, not invincible. While all the mayhem is presented with a great deal  of technical prowess and Verhoeven's typical taste for blunt trauma, it's still a terribly routine wrap-up for, what was up to this point, a promising bit of sci-fi.
That said, the movie isn't nearly as completely terrible as it's reputation might lead you to believe. While it's easily the least necessary of Verhoeven's quartet of Hollywood sci-fi hits (Robocop, Total Recall, the hilarious and underrated Starship Troopers), it's nevertheless a consistently watchable bit of schlock, and it's sad that this movie basically chased Verhoeven away from Hollywood for six years to lick his wounds before returning to his native Holland to helm the 2006 WWII thriller Black Book. There's a prophetic line earlier in the film where Bacon, itching to get out into the world, spits about his new state "You're damn right it's a gift. And if you weren't so close-minded, you'd let me out of this cage so that I could explore it", and one wishes Verhoeven and Marlowe had heeded this credo while developing the screenplay, retaining the film's early sense of wonder, and allowing Sebastian's slide into madness to play out on a far grander scale. As it is, Hollow Man pulls it's punches and settles for far more routine plot digressions. A shame.
 Presentation
The film's 1:85.1 aspect ratio is presented in a crisp, anamorphic transfer that nicely reproduces Jost Vacano's fine cinematography. There doesn't seem to be much of a noticeable improvement over the initial 2000 DVD release of the film, but since that was a great transfer for it's day, there's no complaints here. The audio (English 5.1 is the only available option) is equally fine, with Bacon's disembodied voice often jumping from one speaker to the other, with subtle creaks, footsteps and other sound cues adding to the atmosphere. Plus, as dopey at the last 35 minutes get, there's plenty of sound and fury, and it's all reproduced with room-rattling fidelity. Terrific.
Extras
The most noteworthy extra on this new DVD (indeed, the only reason anyone would bother re-doing such a perfectly fine SE to begin with) is the newly extended director's cut of the film, offering roughly five minutes of extra footage spliced back into the film (not the eight minutes erroneously listed on the sticker on the DVD's shrink wrap). Basically the deleted scenes from the DVD correct places in the narrative, generally just offering grace notes and unnecessary shoe leather to Verhoeven's film. The mean-spirited bit where Bacon smashes an invisible pooch against the wall of it's cage is extended to feature Kim Dickens confronting Bacon about the animal's death, and there's an effectively eerie moment with Shue getting spooked in her apartment and throwing a sheet into mid air, only to see the edge of it momentarily held aloft by the impression of a human head.
 The most notable added scene is the semi-infamous "ghost rape". In the original cut, we follow Sebastian as he stealthily enters the apartment of Rhona Mitra's neighbor, and as his voyeurism escalates into an outright assault on the woman, Verhoeven displays an uncharacteristic moment of modesty, cutting away from the apparent rape to a shot of Shue pulling up in front of Bacon's apartment building. In this slightly extended version, we're treated to a few shock cuts back to the assault in progress, capped with the unpleasant image of the bruised, crying woman lying on her bed as Bacon's feet leave impressions in the carpet as he walks over to the window and spies Shue on the phone in his own apartment. By Verhoeven standards, this is handled as tactfully as possible, but it's still an ugly bit of business that adds little to the narrative. One completely original bit of footage not recycled from the first DVD's deleted scenes menu is the extension of a bedroom scene between Shue and Brolin, with some slightly racier footage and dialogue. The film isn't substantially improved enough by this smattering of extra footage to really recommended a purchase on that basis alone, but for the curious, it's worth a rental at the very least.
Ported over from the original 2000 DVD release are the following documentaries:
- Fleshing Out The Hollow Man is a series of 13 mini-featurettes that offer a solid overview of the staggering technical challenges that faced the film's creative team. We get looks at Paul Verhoeven: Hollywood's Mad Scientist (6:46), The Invisibility Formula (5:01), The Muscle Man (5:23), The Human Bubble (3:13), Thermal Imaging (1:21), The Smoke Guy (1:40), The Gorilla Suit (1:36), The Mask (2:06), Flaming Sebastian (2:42), Elevator Finale (3:08), Ape Reversion Storyboards (2:05), The Underground Lab (1:40), Reversion Progression (0:52), Invisibility Progressions (1:19) and Digital Body Parts Montage (1:32). Highlights include hilarious footage of Verhoeven screaming into a microphone to give the actors something to react to during the sequence where they attempt to bring the test gorilla back from it's invisible state, the palpable sense of physical misery Bacon was submitted to during the course of the filming, forced to wear spandex body suits in green and black flavors and contacts to match, and the meticulous attention to detail brought to the table by the visual effects artists under the supervision of Scott E. Anderson.
- Anatomy Of A Thriller (15:03) is a more compacted version of the above, perfect for filling a programming block on Showtime or HBO. Some of the footage and anecdotes are recycled, but it's an easy enough watch.
- VFX Picture Comparisons offer picture-in-picture clips juxtaposing raw footage recorded on the set with the final, finished effects shots for Kramer's Death (1:02), Sprinkler Attack (0:52) and Sebastian's Demise (2:22). Pretty neat.
- The obligatory menu of previews offers sneak peaks at upcoming DVD and theatrical releases like
Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud (0:54), Wind Chill (2:33), Kaw (2:23), Resident Evil 2-Pack (1:03), Rise: Blood Hunter (1:58), Hostel II (1:15), Close Encounters Of The Third Kind: Ultimate Edition (1:35), Ray Harryhausen In Color (0:53), The Company (2:01) and Seinfeld Season 9 (2:27). No trailers for Hollow Man itself have been included.
Sadly, the footage added to the film itself has caused the two best extra features from the original disc to be dropped from this release. A typically boisterous audio commentary with Paul Verhoeven, Kevin Bacon, and writer Andrew W. Marlowe (with Marlowe at one point delivering the classic line "Only you could possibly be saying that, Paul. 'The real breast was replaced by the digital breast...'"), and an isolated music track offering a thunderous 5.1 presentation of Jerry Goldsmith's terse, agitated score, with commentary by the late film scoring legend interspersed throughout the music-free sequences.
Final Thoughts
Hollow Man remains an efficient, technically spectacular piece of B-movie hokum, but this new edition of the film is hard to recommend, as the new footage is recycled from the original disc's deleted scenes menu and doesn't add much of substance to the film, and the two excellent, alternate audio tracks from the old disc are now MIA. My thought? Give this one a rental and stick with the old release.
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