THE VOID (2016)

Studio:       Screen Media Films
Director:    Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski
Writer:       Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski
Producer:  Casey Walker, Jonathan Bronfman
Stars:     Aaron Poole, Daniel Fathers, Kathleen Munroe, Ellen Wong, Mik Byskov, Art Hindle, Stephanie Belding, James Millington, Evan Stern, Grace Munro, Kenneth Welsh

Review Score:

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Summary:

A hospital’s skeleton staff confronts cosmic chaos when a deputy unknowingly leads an apocalyptic cult to their door.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Drug fiend James flees from a remote farmhouse and escapes into the woods. A screaming woman tries to follow, but she is shot in the back and set on fire by Vincent and his son Simon. A cultist in a white robe and hood with a black triangle over the face observes from a distance.

Deputy Daniel Carter finds James crawling in the road and takes him to the partially closed Marsh County Memorial Hospital where his estranged wife Alison Fraser works as a nurse. Also at the hospital is Dr. Richard Powell, nurse Beverly, intern Kim, pregnant girl Maggie and her grandfather Ben, and patient Cliff.

Into the night, Daniel discovers Beverly entranced and stabbing Cliff Robinson in his eye with scissors after cutting off her own face. Beverly moves toward Daniel and he shoots her dead. Daniel collapses to the floor from a brief seizure and experiences a strange vision of another world.

While everyone struggles to figure out what happened with Beverly, state trooper Mitchell comes to the hospital to collect James after discovering a bloody scene at the farmhouse.

Daniel goes outside to call in Beverly’s death from his patrol car and is confronted by robed cultists. Daniel fights off a cultist who stabs him in the chest and he runs back inside.

Powell, Alison, and Kim tend to Daniel as he lies bleeding on the lobby floor. Meanwhile, cultists surround the building.

Daniel and Mitchell rush into James’ room when they hear James screaming. They are shocked to see Beverly’s corpse has transformed into a tentacle creature and is attacking James. Daniel and Mitchell rescue James and lock Beverly in the room.

With everyone assembled in the lobby, Vincent and Simon enter and hold the group at gunpoint, demanding to get to James. James takes Maggie hostage to protect himself and stabs Powell in the throat with a scalpel when the doctor comes too close. Ben punches out James. Powell dies.

During the commotion, the Beverly creature returns, drags Mitchell into an adjacent hallway, and devours him. After Daniel is knocked to the floor in the fight, Vincent shoots the creature while Simon hacks it to pieces with a fire ax.

Everyone regroups in the lobby. Alison stops Vincent from Killing Daniel, as Vincent and Simon trust no one and initially suspect Daniel could be part of the cult. The men collect the creature parts, ignite them, and roll them outside on a gurney.

Vincent and Simon accompany Daniel when he goes to his patrol car to grab his shotgun. The trio escapes another swarm of cultists and flees back to the hospital.

While the men are outside, Alison ventures into the basement to collect medical supplies for delivering Maggie’s baby. Powell is mysteriously resurrected and he captures Alison.

Daniel is upset to discover Alison missing. He and Vincent go looking for her and find photographs and files in Powell’s office indicating Powell was the cult’s leader. Powell calls Daniel on his office phone and taunts the deputy, telling him that he can show Daniel more of the vision he experienced while unconscious earlier.

Kim and Ben stay with Maggie while Daniel, Vincent, and Simon prepare to search the basement for Alison. The three men interrogate James first. James tells them he was a junkie who met a girl on the road who claimed she knew of a pill house where they could score crystal meth. However, the house turned out to be the cult’s lair. Powell gave them drugs in exchange for watching them have sex. Powell then forced them to watch as people were brutally sacrificed. James claims Powell has the power to transform people, but swears he was not part of the cult, which is why he fled. The three men force James to come with them downstairs.

Alison regains consciousness on an operating table. Powell begins explaining that losing his daughter Sarah compelled him to find a way to defy death. Having cut off his face, Powell shows Alison that something now grows inside her stomach, indicating that the unborn baby of Daniel’s she previously lost has been called back from the abyss in a new form.

Daniel, Vincent, Simon, and James find a door marked with a black triangle and enter. The men end up surrounded by deformed corpses brought back to life. One of the creatures kills James. The other three men are separated in the commotion.

Maggie goes into labor. Being an untrained nurse, Kim insists she is unable to perform a C-section. As Ben pleads with Kim to help his granddaughter, Maggie suddenly stands and slits Ben’s throat. Maggie reveals she is carrying Dr. Powell’s child. Kim hides as cultists enter the building and Maggie goes to them.

Driven mad by a vision of his wife’s murder, Vincent attacks Simon. However, Simon shakes his father out of the illusion.

Daniel finds Alison in the operating room pregnant, covered in slime, with creature tentacles extending from her body. Powell’s voice appeals to Daniel as he has another vision, but Daniel ends up murdering his transformed wife with an ax.

Daniel is transported to a morgue room with a glowing black triangle on the wall. Powell’s voice tells Daniel that he defied God and beings older than time blessed him with the ability to conquer life and death. Powell promises that Daniel can have his child back too if he is willing to die first.

Flanked by cultists, Maggie suddenly stabs Daniel and he falls to the floor. Powell appears without any skin in front of the triangle and Maggie kneels before him. Powell tells Daniel that his disciples have gathered to witness his daughter’s rebirth and they will transform as well.

Powell kneels before the triangle and recites an incantation. The triangle recedes into the wall and the room is bathed in bright light. Maggie’s torso explodes as she births the reborn Sarah Powell. The cultists drop dead and the Sarah creature starts stomping their heads.

Vincent and Simon arrive and battle the beast. The creature envelops Vincent, but he covers it in gasoline and screams for Simon to kill it. Simon sets the creature and his father on fire with a flare.

As Powell begins transforming, Daniel swings an ax into the former doctor’s shoulder. Powell grabs Daniel. Powell tells Daniel he can be with Alison if he gives himself up to the abyss. Daniel refuses. He then grabs Powell, tackles him, and both men tumble into the void. The triangle portal closes.

A creature pursues Simon as the underground world collapses. Simon makes it back to the hospital in reality and reunites with Kim as dawn breaks. Daniel and Alison are shown in the netherworld holding hands beneath a floating black pyramid.

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Review:

When a frantic man crawls out of a house of horrors and into a remote road, Deputy Daniel Carter finds his formerly quiet night accelerating fast down a path toward cosmic chaos.  Daniel would prefer to avoid Marsh County Memorial, partly because a recent fire has it operating on a skeleton crew, and partly because his estranged wife Alison works there.  Nevertheless, limited options force Daniel to race the mystery man to medical aid as quickly as he can.

In silently stalking pursuit is a cult in white hoods and robes with black triangles over their faces.  They surround the building, sealing its scant staff and few patients inside with the threat of what might happen if anyone steps into the night.

What Daniel, Alison, and the others discover is that the terrors lurking within the hospital’s walls may be far more frightening.  A doorway is opening to another dimension.  That portal has the power to transform corpses into creatures in open defiance of death itself.  A hellish dreamscape now takes physical form as everyone is thrust into a confrontation with otherworldly evil whose secrets expose a centuries-old conspiracy.

For “The Void,” co-writers/co-directors Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski step outside the comedic confines of their Astron-6 filmmaking collective to take a direct route into undiluted eldritch eeriness.  Evoking elements of “Halloween II,” “Assault on Precinct 13,” “Prince of Darkness,” “The Thing,” and “In the Mouth of Madness,” the film’s darkly demonic, understated intensity makes it the best John Carpenter movie not actually made by John Carpenter.

That’s a reductive way of encapsulating the film’s feel for the benefit of a pull quote without rightly representing the full scope of what “The Void” achieves.  It’s actually less hyperbolic to say “The Void” features everything any horror film fan can ask for.  Psychological dread.  Body horror.  Gruesome gore.  Lovecraftian nightmares.  A disturbing cult.  “The Void” delivers a full-bodied fright film experience that is visceral as well as cerebral, and executes on both fronts with calculated precision that is devilishly entertaining.

Even though monster effects are practical and certain scenes nod obviously at everything from Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” to Lucio Fulci’s “The Beyond,” I wouldn’t use the term ‘throwback’ or describe the movie as some sort of 80s tribute.  “The Void” doesn’t hollowly echo its influences or shoot for a retro sheen.  Gillespie and Kostanski simply take shades of siege action, creature feature, supernatural slasher, and satanic suspense, and shape them into a uniquely enthralling entity that is a beast of its own design.

You’ve seen each piece somewhere else before.  But you haven’t seen them blended together this creatively or this cohesively, without the result being hodge podge homage.

Where the movie misses a step is in a midsection mired in more dingy dungeon exploration than can be kept compelling.  “The Void” opens immediately on action and rarely relents from that point forward as everyone races from encounters with cultists and creatures to standoffs at gunpoint and unexpected reveals.  So when Daniel and company find themselves creeping quietly through flashlight beams in dimly lit rooms, momentum follows suit and slows down.

Some quick cuts and dark shots also make monsters difficult to discern.  I understand the “less is more” idea of allowing imagination to fill in blanks and not lingering long enough to see puppet strings.  But with all of the fantastic physical work put into designing and realizing these tentacled monstrosities, it might be a boon to have a better look.

Certain story turns don’t come as surprises (you know at least one person isn’t outing his/her full identity upfront).  Yet backstory developments concerning grief over dead children bond characters thematically while deepening drama underneath.  There is a lot happening at every level in “The Void.”  Everyone from Aaron Poole as the Everyman at its center to familiar Canadian faces Art Hindle and Kenneth Welsh around the edges grounds this far out fiction in an unsettling world where maddened minds meet a relatable reality.

“The Void” innovates using established ideas.  It captivates by keeping you creeped out.  It’s a movie you see in your mind’s eye when it’s over and then again on your TV when you willingly watch it once more.  That’s how effective “The Void” is as a film whose frights make it a top choice for terror.

Review Score:  85

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