I finally broke down and paid the $8 to watch THE VOID (2016), a Canadian Lovecraftian horror film shot on a very small budget. I found it crazy fun, definitely reminiscent of 80s horror films (it made me think of what John Carpenter and Clive Barker would make if they did a weekend of drugs together) with its old school over-the-top gore, though a bit convoluted and resting on somewhat weak characters.
The film centers on Carter, a police officer, who finds a bloody man on a remote road and brings him to a hospital that is being shut down due to an old fire. Only a skeleton crew is running the place, which includes a doctor and two nurses, one of them Carter’s ex-wife. What Carter soon realizes is an enormous evil resides in the hospital, one breaking in from another dimension, and warping reality, infecting people, and calling its followers (homicidal white-robed cultists) in this dimension. As the cultists lay siege to the hospital, the evil within begins to infect the people inside, leading Carter on a journey to confront it.
It’s the kind of movie where people die like flies, the horror elements are kitchen-sinked, and the gore is over the top. If the filmmakers had managed to invest a little more in making us care about the characters and streamlining the structure a bit, THE VOID could have been great. As it is, it’s good, and if you don’t take it very seriously, it’s a fun watch. Just bloody weird mayhem.
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