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sorcerer_magus
Reviews
Horrorvision (2001)
The Matrix without the budget...
Actually, it's the Matrix without the budget, the actors, the script, the music, the special effects, the choreography...well, you get the idea. It's also a little bit of Videodrome-style evolutionary musings and S&M thrown in for good measure.
That's not to say it's a total waste of money. On the contrary, this really is one of the better Full Moon Films out there. The creatures are fairly well-done, especially the cyborg-moderator Wetwire, although the puppet-animations are hilarious...sometimes creatures seem to be thrown at the actors and the final monster looks like a costume I used to wear during Halloween promotions at the local costume shop.
Still, there are worse movies to rip off than the Matrix--and this movie is pretty blatant about it. Bradbury is an intimidating-looking black guy in shades wearing a leather trench-coat (his is sleeveless so we won't forget we're watching HorrorVision) who teaches awkward young white hacker Dez that he is the promised one--um, make that seven--who the machines fear will end their reign on Earth. I kept waiting for everybody to start popping red and blue pills...
Still, the ideas are clever, if vague, and the apocalyptic feel of a world slowly going mad somehow manages to work, despite being shown almost no images of the chaos we're told is erupting around the country. The Wetwire sequence alone is almost creepy enough to warrent a rental, and there are some other nice touches in the film.
But, as has been pointed out before, the movie ends just when the plot really starts to pick up. Furthermore, the pacing in this movie is bizarre--twenty minutes are spent on dramatic character development, then Bradbury appears and the heroes suddenly find themselves in a scene that should have been the film's climax, and then they spend the rest of the movie driving through a desert to a battle that seems to have little consequence to the plot, and isn't nearly as impressive as some of the things seen earlier.
It's still worth seeing, mainly for the Wetwire sequence--you'll see what I mean when you watch it, and some self-aware humor that lets us know that the movie-makers aren't taking all this too seriously either. It really is one of the best Full Moon movies out there: it's just that, as of yet, that's not saying much...
Hollow Man (2000)
"Twister" of Invisible-Man Movies
Several years ago the movie "Twister" came out in theaters. It had groundbreaking computer special-effects. It had a script by renowned author Micheal Crichton, also responsible for Jurassic Park. It seemed like the perfect blockbuster hit. Instead, it became a one-dimensional joke of a movie with only the special effects keeping it from being completely dismissed as hack-work.
"Hollow Man" is the "Twister" of invisible-man movies.
Okay, so maybe we had a little bit more warning with Paul Verhouvan's name in the credits. Although he made brilliant sci-fi satires with Robocop and Starship Troopers, he also made Basic Instinct and--lest anyone ever forgive and forget--Showgirls.
The movie starts off well enough and certainly Kevin Bacon can't be faulted for a very convincing performance, but the first twenty minutes of the movie could have been deleted and replaced with a message saying "Sebastian Caine is a jerk and other people don't like him."
But then Caine turns invisible, Kevin Bacon becomes a voice talent, and the movie gets really interesting...right? Not exactly. While the special-effects are amazing, Caine never seems to be slowly breaking down due to his isolation from humanity--he merely devolves into an invisible wise-cracking Freddy Krueger with no real explanation.
Although the special effects remain impressive--just check out a battle scene in a pool--the story just sinks lower and lower until finally the research team battles against a Sebastian who has not only become a standard horror movie villain, but has become inexplicably indestructable...the Terminator died faster and with less of a struggle than this supposedly human character.
There are other problems--the research team all look like 90210 cast members, the scientific principle behind invisibility is only given the vaguest explanation, Sebastion's often-mentioned genius is never given a demonstration, the opportunities of an invisible man loose in today's world is never shown or even mentioned, none of the other actors are capable of conveying anything except anger, fear, and boredom, the last twenty minutes of the movie pile one absurdity on top of the other like a house of cards, and so on.
This movie, like "Twister," will be remembered for its special effects, and maybe for Kevin Bacon's admirable attempts to breathe some depth and complexity into the character of Sebastian Caine, a true hollow man at home in an equally hollow movie.