Unfortunately, "The Void" did not live up to my high expectations, and it didn't give me many reasons to meet it at its bar-lowering level. It is indeed an homage to Lovecraft, Barker, Carpenter, Romero and Fulci (who, when listed together, sound like the world's spookiest law firm). But co-writer/director duo Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski fail to synthesize their influences in a meaningful way. I don't want to say that this is a common problem with indie horror films, because half the fun of being a horror fan is looking for new stories amidst heaps of tired genre pastiche and shameless "homages" (Carpenter has especially been homaged to death within the last couple years). "The Void" sounds irresistible, but it's poorly paced, thinly plotted, and unimaginative throughout its bloody special effects-centric set pieces.
The film's plot is wafer-thin, but that's not the biggest problem. We follow a group of small-town residents, led by rookie cop Daniel (Aaron Poole), as they are besieged by murderous cult members, tentacle creatures/humanoid monsters with hideously deformed bodies. There's not much more to it than that. The cultists and monsters kill and/or transform anyone that opposes them, and human survivors have to kill face-less killers—the cultists wear white sheets with a black triangle at the center of them—lest they become the monsters that threaten their existence.
"The Void" is a siege narrative, so style matters more than anything, and the style here is patchy and flimsy. Where to begin? The film's frequent use of close-ups and undistinguished (and primarily dark) color palette never let me forget I was watching a low-budget film. The characters never interact with each other in a way that suggests they're thinking or feeling anything beyond a generic fight-or-flight imperative. The performances are competent, but bland. The pervasive violence is monotonous. And the antagonists, while refreshingly tactile (ie: not computer-generated), look like leftovers from earlier/better movies.
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