The Void
Eric S Brown
Fangoria magazine called The Void “Disturbing and inconic” . . .and they’re not wrong. The Void is a rather simple horror film in many ways centering on a small town police officer who finds a wounded man and rushes him to the emergency room of an old hospital that is in the process of being shutdown. One of the few nurses at the hospital is Officer Carter’s estranged wife and the only doctor, Powell, has known him his entire life. Things go sideways quickly as a nurse stabs a patient through the eye, killing him, and then attacks officer Carter who shoots her in self defense but that’s only the beginning as soon the hospital is surrounded by a group of white robe clad, knife wielding cultists. The nurse reanimates into a monster that Carter is only able to defeat with the help of heavily armed men who fight through the cultists, breaking into the hospital, with the goal of killing the man Carter bought there for help. As the night goes on, it’s revealed that nothing is what it seems.
The Void is a stunning film for something shot on such a low budget. The acting is fantastic, bringing a rare emotional depth, and the monsters are impressive in terms of their gore. The Void will certainly make hardcore horror fans think of Lucio Fulci’s Lovecraftian masterpiece The Beyond. The two films have much in common from managing to throw zombies into the Lovecraftian mix to their ambiguous, somewhat surreal endings. The only lackluster thing about The Void is its main villain, whose identity will come as shock to some, because of a good deal of the horror around his transformation doesn’t live up to the rest of the movie’s terror despite a clear attempt to make it something powerful and moving. Even so, The Void is certainly an underrated film and among the best Lovecraftain films produced in recent years.
