October 3, 2017 – Plot: When police officer Carter (Aaron Poole) discovers a blood-soaked man limping down a deserted road, he rushes him to a local hospital with a barebones, night shift staff. As cloaked, cult-like figures surround the building, the patients and staff inside start to turn ravenously insane. Trying to protect the survivors, Carter leads them into the depths of the hospital where they discover a gateway to immense evil. (Source: IMDb. Written by Prodigy PR).

As I often say, I’m horrible at plot recaps and here doubly so. Because what you have in this gem is a paper thin plot involving a crazed hooded killer cult (one that makes run of the mill cinematic devil worship look like a PTA bake sale), a hospital standoff, a quest for immortality, and spare but memorable hints of gruesome insane cosmic creatures to drive you right mad.

 The Void is a lot of John Carpenter movies in one – The Thing, Prince of Darkness, a little bit of Assault on Precinct 13. And like many of that director’s films, the budget was low. But it all comes together as something new and original, inspiring simultaneous awe and nausea.

It also has another principal influence: Howard Phillip Lovecraft. There’s plenty of body horror, entities that have no description, and a mad doctor/wizard in touch with them. The cult he runs is composed of drug addicts and ‘degenerates,’ and we all know how much HPL loved the lower rungs of society.

I’m also very interested in why this film presents some signature anxieties, namely hospital-phobia (really a fear of death) and childbirth. Central to the plot are a pregnancy, the past death of a child and the violent birthing of hideous creatures. We have a nurse played by Ellen Wong who just couldn’t care any less about a patient’s outcome.

The character Vincent (Daniel Fathers), a stock grizzled gun-toting badass, makes a point of viciously slut-shaming a pregnant girl in the hospital, in the heated midst of a siege by creepy hooded cultists. Why?

Then there’s the ending.  Haunting for sure, this time taking a cue from Sam Raimi, not John Carpernter. I want to know what happens next, but I don’t think we should be told.

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