Last night’s Spooktober viewing was The Void, a Canadian film funded on IndieGoGo in 2016 for $82,000. I’d heard good things about it, and I wasn’t led astray.
More than anything else, the film — with it’s reliance on practical effects over computer-generated imagery, it’s small cast and single location, and it’s riffing on Lovecraftian themes — reminds me of the Stuart Gordon films of the 80s, especially From Beyond.
The premise of the film is a simple one: It’s deep in the graveyard shift, and a cop stumbles across a blood-covered man stumbling along the side of a country road, in shock. He throws him into his patrol car, and races him to the local county hospital, staffed by a couple of doctors and nurses, tending for a few patients. And now we have our location and cast for the entire film.
Of course, it doesn’t take long for things to go completely Cosmic Horror, with _something_ in the hospital transforming people into hideous, tentacled monsters straight out of The Thing, giving our protagonist visions of endless stretches of space, a blasted, lifeless planet, and an ominous black pyramid… and, of course, as any Call of Cthulhu gamer knows: That’s when the cultists show up.
The Void is well worth your time, especially if you’re a fan of Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu gaming, or the style of 1980s Indie horror films. It’s available on disc, and on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.