In the past few years it seems Sony has made it their goal to fund limitless, and unneeded, direct-to-video sequels to genre titles that have had past success. We've seen sequels to Single White Female, Starship Troopers, and there's even the upcoming I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, so therefore it's no surprise that they've dipped into the well again for Hollow Man II, the follow-up to 2000's decidedly crappy Paul Verohoeven helmed film starring Kevin Bacon.

Scripted by DTV sequel specialist Joel Soisson (who's been involved in no less than five franchises), this starts off with a scientist being attacked by a, literally, unseen assailant during a fancy dinner party in a hotel. Seems that our "not there" baddie is looking for a "buffer" (a serum that helps ease the pain and slow down the deteriorating process that comes with being the subject of government experiments to make invisible "super soldiers") and after extracting the name of fellow scientist Maggie Dalton (Laura Regan) from his victim he soon tells him, "you never even saw me." before proceeding to slit his throat with the piece of a broken cell phone.

Enter Seattle detective Frank Turner (Peter Facinelli) who, along with his partner, is assigned to protect Maggie in light of her college being brutally murdered. It seems like your standard stakeout and the movie even takes the time out to have a completely pointless sequence where two "home alone" teens are getting ready to make their own homemade sex tape while our sneaky villain watches from within the room.

It's all pretty standard from here, folks. Frank's partner is killed by our baddie, the government steps in to try and cover things up (this leads to a few low-scale action scenes), we learn that our baddie is super soldier Michael Griffin (Christian Slater, who has about five minutes screen time when not supplying the voice of our often yelling invisible man), and Frank and Maggie find themselves not only on the run from a bad tempered Michael but also from the feds and various other policemen.

Hollow Man II is pretty standard stuff. It's about as ho-hum as you'd expect and moves along at a clichéd pace with some minimal CGI effects and a much tamer outlook on bloodshed and violence than Verhoeven's at times misogynistic original. It never really makes any sort of impression, preferring to be a forgettable and silly timewaster, but at least it manages to be a tiny bit better than the first film (which isn't really a hard feat, truth be told).

It's also never dull and the acting is pretty solid with Facinelli making a serviceable hero and Slater seemingly hamming it up in his role, but it's really hard to wring suspense out of the movie when we never really see our antagonist "in the flesh" instead seeing actors trying to convincingly throw themselves around like they're being manhandled and various items being flung across the room.

Take this for what it is - another mediocre and pointless cash-in on a recognizable name. If you miss out on it, it's really no big loss, unless of course you're the type that finds it necessary to see every sequel you can (I guess I'm in that group since I've seen all of the Leprechaun movies and almost all of the Witchcraft ones). (Chris Hartley, 5/24/06)

Directed By: Claudio Faeh.
Written By: Joel Soisson.

Starring: Christian Slater, Peter Facinelli, Laura Regan, David McIlwraith.