The Void begins with a dash of In Cold Blood, a small town sheriff on a quiet country road and a skeleton crew (one doctor, two nurses, and a student nurse) at a hospital with a couple of patients (one in bed and another in the waiting room with her grandfather) in its final days as it prepares to close after a fire while silent Hazmat suited figures (with a triangle instead of a rectangle for the face) gather and watch silently in the distance preparing for a siege. A state trooper joins them when things start to get weird. Sadly as The Void’s story unfolds, you learn little more although there is clearly a story in there somewhere, it just isn’t fully fleshed out.
The Void’s filmmakers clearly love movies and horror because they perfectly capture the atmosphere. They make excellent references to H. P. Lovecraft, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg’s body horror period, Supernatural, The Neon Demon, even echoes of the final scene in Alien: Resurrection, but a movie cannot live on references alone. There needs to be character development, and by the end of the film, when you look back, it needs to retroactively come together, but sadly The Void does not. I think that the filmmakers had a story, but unfortunately failed to communicate it to the audience and got caught up in the gore, which is exquisite. Watch Banshee Chapter instead.
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When I started watching The Void, I was not sure if the Hunters (Supernatural reference) in the beginning were killing people because they were stopping an infection. There is even a reference to Night of the Living Dead so while I was not expecting zombies, it would explain the silent Hazmat suit guys. Instead it turns out to be some From Beyond cult led by a doctor trying to harness the power from some horrifying dimension to bring his daughter back to life in some monstrous tentacle-form. Some people from the small town are willingly a part of the cult, and some are unfortunate victims. Everyone keeps referencing the policeman’s father-did he try to fight it or was he a part of it? I think that he just died, and people like to mess with the sheriff. This cult conducts experiments and has murder sex orgies by luring drug addicts to gain access to another dimension. Grainy Polaroids are not helpful.
The Void should have spent more time fleshing out the creepy small town cult vibe of The Wicker Man or at least provided fewer misleading hints that take the viewer down the wrong path. How come so many members of the small town are surprised? I can see them not believing rumors, but there would be rumors. Once the crap hits the fan, they should be less surprised. The members of this cult want to die, transform and get access to the other side. Who gets to transform and who gets a Hazmat suit? At some point, the Hazmat suit guys transform and become goo. Are they part of our world or other dimensional figures drawn by some horn? Was the first nurse a willing or unwilling victim? Why do some people get visions and others do not? It isn’t simply being inside of the hospital.
As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the Hunters know as much or as little as we do and may have been too zealous in their vigilante clean up. I love a John Woo standoff as much as anybody, but they do not add much to the story in retrospect other than muscle and to suggest that this cult’s reach is larger than the small town. I love Kenneth Walsh’s voice too, but if you are going to give him that many speeches, spring for closed captioning. I am a huge fan of dimensional transcendentalism, i.e. Tardis, and showing its damaging psychological effects on the human mind, but the story needs more of a foundation before doing all the cool stuff.
Also the wife/nurse transforms in the end yet when the sheriff appears in the other dimension, she is back in scrubs. No, I do not accept your version of a happy ending. Once you transform, I think that you go native and stay native, but because the sheriff went over before dying, he would still be human. Where is the doctor? A black pyramid in the sky may be evocative, but you did not earn that otherworldly black pyramid.
I really like The Void’s pagan horror film ambitions, but when I mistake my DVD’s technical difficulties for an intentional film moment until I decide to rent it via streaming, something has gone wrong. The Void needed a couple more rewrites before it was ready to become a film.