Director Robert W. Filion’s feature, Echoes from the Void, is a horror anthology in which a dangerous convict weaves together four deadly tales to play with the mind of anyone who is willing to listen.
Dr. Erin Murphy (Amie Henry) never planned on evaluating killers as a career, but an unfortunate on-the-job incident forced her hand, and here she is. Today’s case is Bob, a man suspected of kidnapping a young woman. Bob is an open book, but he doesn’t answer Dr. Murphy’s questions directly. Instead, he starts telling stories, and they have a way of pulling Murphy in, almost hypnotically.
Bob’s first story is One. Nicole (Emily Tynan McDaniel) has just killed her therapist, and now she’s on the phone with the therapist’s next patient, Kaitlin — her next target. Before she arrives, Nicole needs to clear out the rest of the office of anyone who can get in her way.
Next is The Resurrection of Amy Barlow, which follows Tyler Brody (Art Parsells), a man carrying serious guilt over something he did years ago. The person he hurt, Amy Barlow (Ella Grace Misenheimer), won’t let him forget it.
Third is Rocks, where the elderly Martin (Jerry Keys) wants payback against his ex-wife, Kathleen (Catherine Trail). Helping him is a young woman, Skye (Poppy Gillett), whom he recruited for his straightforward plan of murder. As things go, a simple plan is never as simple as it seems.
A shadowy figure enters a dimly lit room as a woman recoils in a tense moment from Echoes from the Void.
“…a dangerous convict weaves together four deadly tales to play with the mind of anyone who is willing to listen.”
Fourth is The Elsewhere Room. Siblings Taryn (Sophia Lily) and Bryce (Mason Gillett) and their parents pull up to a cabin in the woods for a quiet getaway. She heads upstairs to settle in, and when she goes to her parents’ room, they are missing — vanished into thin air. She and her brother are on their own now, and they have to figure out how to survive long enough to find out what happened.
Echoes from the Void isn’t your typical horror movie. It harks back to the old Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone, which were mini-mysteries, except here it leans on the horror and supernatural side of things. Instead of jump scares, we watch flawed, damaged people, then drop them into an extreme situation to see what happens. Like a wind-up toy. You crank it, let it go, and see where it winds up.
Like The Twilight Zone, it plays on a moment of human weakness. In One, Nicole isn’t killing at random — she’s got a real target in mind. The Resurrection of Amy Barlow is really about grief and guilt. Rocks goes somewhere much sicker and more twisted, playing out like a straight-up torture tale. And The Elsewhere Room works as a mystery box, with a supernatural twist at the end. There is also a bonus story.
What I appreciate most is the swagger of an elevated low-budget indie production. Filmmaker Robert W. Filion shows his resourcefulness in telling writer Brad Hord’s stories. He works with what already exists in terms of props and setting, and it shows. Rocks gets a lot of mileage out of a bulldozer for one of its kills, and that kind of resourcefulness is all over this thing. Echoes from the Void is fun from the start, and then creepy is close behind.
For screening information, visit the Echoes from the Void official website.
"…Rocks gets a lot of mileage out of a bulldozer…"
