Astron-6 is at it again with another entertaining, visually stimulating movie with The Void, however, they have some trouble with the story.
PLOT SUMMARY
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.
The Void comes to us from directors Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie, who you may know from their other films Father’s Day and The Editor. This time around, The Void takes some inspiration from Lovecraft, Hellraiser and a dash of The Thing to serve us one substantial special effects splatter flick. Unfortunately, the story leaves too many questions in the air and the ending lands on a flat note.
The Void is about local sheriff Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole), who comes upon a scared, bloody victim on the side of the road and brings him over to the closest hospital for a check up. The hospital has recently suffered a fire and is in the transition of being moved. The only people on staff are a couple of nurses and one old Doctor, played by Kenneth Welsh. Soon, things take a turn for the incredibly, body morphing bizarre and a bunch of white robbed weirdos are blocking the way out of the hospital. Before you can say better effects than The Thing prequel, the shit hits the fan.
First off, The Void does a lot of stuff right. It knows that horror fans want some good ole’ fashion practical gore and special effects and that is the biggest selling feature for this movie. The monsters, even though the story hardly provides a reasoning for them, are bizarre creatures oozing blood and gore. A few look like they walked off the set of a Hellraiser movie and others are stuff body horror nightmares are made of.
Unfortunately, what The Void does poorly is providing a solid story. Instead, it throws together some crazy imagery but doesn’t take the time to explain what the hell is going on. Most of the big reveals feel tacked on and left to the viewer to decide what they think is happening. I’m not saying a movie needs to spell everything out, but a bit of information to back up the cool imagery would be nice.
It might seem like I’m overly negative with The Void and I don’t mean to be, as in the end I did the enjoy the hell out of it. It’s a movie that could be expanded on with a sequel, but as a standalone horror film, it lacks coherency.
Either way, if you just want blood, gore, excellent special effects and some crazy, unexplained shit happening, you’ll fall in love with The Void.