I was really looking forwards to '80s horror throwback
The Void. All of the press, marketing, and viewer response about the film suggested that it was a good spiritual successor to
The Thing, which remains one of my favorite movies.
The premise is that a police officer encounters a young blood-soaked man crawling out of the woods, and takes him to the local hospital, which is suddenly surrounded by strange hooded figures, and all communication with the outside world is cut off. Gross and Thing-y shenanigans ensue. Except it's not nearly as good as
The Thing.
- One of the things I love most about The Thing is that it's incredibly efficient in building its characters. You've got eleven characters, most of whom don't get that much screen time, but all of whom have distinct and unique personalities that play off each other in interesting ways. I really like the "describe a character without referring to their profession or appearance" test for movies, and almost everybody in The Void fails it.
- The Void's editing is just fucking abysmal. There are a ton of really awkward cuts, many of which violate the 180 degree rule, seemingly with no other purpose than making sure the audience doesn't see the monsters, even if the monsters are standing there in a well-lit hallway, and the characters can see them just fine. Like, I get that only showing a bit of the monster at once can make it scarier, but this is fucking ridiculous
- Along those same lines, even when they're "showing" the monsters, they add in a ton of shaky cam and flickering lights. I still have no clue what most of the creatures in the movie looked like.
So, yeah. There are some things I did like about the movie, the use of color was excellent, and the use of light and dark when the camera
wasn't shaking around was really effective.
It has some really gorgeous and effective shots
but when so much of the movie looks like this:
it's hard to recommend.
So, verdict: Better than
Harbinger Down, but not by much.
