For all intents and purposes, Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man was little more than the umpteenth retelling of The Invisible Man, albeit with a splash of cutting-edge CGI and the psychosexual undertones that had dominated the boundary-pushing filmmaker’s work for decades.
Largely panned by critics despite visual effects that were nothing short of remarkable for the time, it did at least manage to hoover up $190 million at the box office and secure itself an Academy Award nomination for its impeccable use of transforming Kevin Bacon into a transparent monster, even if it did end up losing out to Gladiator.
Naturally, because no IP that turned a profit is ever allowed to enjoy retirement for particularly long, Sony decided that the smartest way to maximize an brand that was hardly designed as a franchise-launcher was with a direct-to-video sequel boasting barely a budget to speak of, one that drafted in Christian Slater to battle against the rogue scientists who experimented with his opacity.
As you can imagine, the results were predictably dire, and it was essentially every bargain basement follow-up of a notable blockbuster rolled into one in terms of its construction, execution, and complete and utter need to exist.
And yet, because the spookiest day on the calendar encroaches ever closer, streaming subscribers have opted to give Hollow Man II a whirl. Per FlixPatrol, the entirely forgettable pseudoscience slasher has become the sixth most-watched feature on all of Max, quite the achievement for a follow-up a lot of people no doubt didn’t even have a clue existed in the first place.