Hollow Man, Script Review
BY BERT EHRMANN

I recently had the opportunity to read the script to the movie HOLLOW MAN. The movie is being directed by Paul Verhoeven and is set to be released sometime next year. HOLLOW MAN stars; Kevin Bacon, Josh Brolin, William Devane and Elisabeth Shue.

The movie follows a small group of scientists who are trying to find a way to make living things invisible. The military is funding the project because they want to use the technology to more effectively spy on other nations and generally "do really bad things". The scientists soon discover how to make things invisible, via testing on animals, but are having problems bringing them back to the visible world. The answer to this problem is soon discovered and the lead scientist, Sebastian Craine, quickly volunteers to be the first human turned invisible. However, there's a few problems involved in this process.

First of all, it's extremely painful to become invisible. Craine describes the process almost like being set on fire. In fact, the team of scientists are forced to revive Craine after he literally "dies" when given the invisibility treatment. Secondly, the reversal process doesn't quite work on humans (didn't see that one coming). And last of all, the invisibility process makes the person who has become invisible quite insane. In fact homicidally insane.

As the script evolves, Craine slowly becomes more and more insane as he goes about using his invisibility "power" to rape a woman and generally sneak around unnoticed. Finally Craine decides to kill off all of the other scientists in a "lab fire" (because only they know that the invisibility process really works) and sneak off to cause even more mayhem on a larger scale. It's up to the scientists to stop him before he can kill them all and escape.

Although the premise of this movie sounds interesting enough, the story simply borrows elements from other stories to infuse their story with something that's "scary". For example; we constantly can see that Craine's at a door looking in on the occupants by his breath on the window. Wasn't this right out of JURASSIC PARK and the 'RAPTORS? Also, the scientists have an intricate system of infrared cameras around the complex that allows them to track everyone via a series of "blips" on an overlay of the building on a computer screen. Can anyone say ALIEN?

Furthermore, there's a line in the story that usually kills more of the characters than any other line in movie history:

      MATT: "If we split up, can we trap him on corridor eight?"

Split up? Did the writer of the script never see SCREAM? Even I know that splitting up's a bad idea.

Even though the story does have some good points and ideas: we're never sure if Craine's about to attack or if he's miles away simply because we can never see him, and the fact that Craine's eyelids are also invisible so he can see right through them and never enjoys any "shut eye", the script doesn't really add anything to the movie going experience. I'm afraid that Verhoeven's posibly got another bomb on his hands. 9/27/99