The Void

In Jeremy Gillespie’s and Steven Kostanski’s The Void, an unsuspecting police officer finds himself caught up in one creepy hospital drama.

The story begins by Daniel (Aaron Poole), a middle-aged police officer, taking an injured victim to a barely-functioning hospital. Staffed with one doctor, two nurses (one of which is Daniel’s wife), and a nursing student, there isn’t much this hospital can do for anyone. Things are already looking bleak when one of the nurses stabs a patient in the eye, two armed men break into the hospital, and ominous hooded figures are waiting outside for all of them. Oh, and for good measure, there’s a pregnant teenager about to go into labor. How are all of these events connected?

“So, there seems to be no reason for these things to be popping out of everyone else…”

To start, there is almost too much going on in this plot. I was unsure If I should be focusing on the scary cult outside the hospital, the psychos that burst in about to shoot everyone, or the thing that’s crawling out of the nurse who just stabbed someone. I had no idea where this was going. Not to say I wasn’t interested, but it seemed maybe this was going to be an overreach.

Somehow, they managed to tie these events together. All of this was caused by Dr. Richard Powell (Kenneth Welsh) who is trying to bring back his daughter from the dead. So, he went “mad scientist?” Nope. Called in a favor from Satan? Nope. A mixture of the two? Honestly, I have no idea.

I can’t say what the doctor did to create this chaos. The hooded figures were his so-called “disciples,” but where was their motivation? He didn’t exactly promise them anything. He doesn’t say outright that what he has done is going to make him immortal. He just talked a lot of crap about cocoons and moths. Apparently, “the thing” coming out of everyone is his daughter being reborn. However, we learn that the pregnant teenager was carrying his reincarnated daughter the whole time. So, there seems to be no reason for these things to be popping out of everyone else. Also, it isn’t even really his daughter being born, it’s one of those shrieking beasts that somehow got inside everyone. It’s not even clear what this “void” is that the doctor opens at the end. I suppose we’re just meant to accept that it’s your standard giant light coming out of a triangle leading to some other dimension.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Finally, we get to the “resolution.” Daniel saves the day by pushing himself and the doctor into the mysterious triangle void, but we’re mostly left with questions at the end.

There are some strange plot holes here, which is too bad because the acting, effects, and setting were all decent. Poole plays a sympathetic cop, and I appreciated all the gross zombie-aliens (I can’t even categorize them properly). All the pieces were there. In fact, there are too many pieces. Take out the weird hooded people, choose between a crazy science experiment and Satan, and there you go! A fun movie. That’s not the direction this film went, though. The nonsensical plot overshadows the good parts. So close!

The Void (2016) – Written and Directed by Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski. Starring Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe, and Daniel Fathers

5 out of 10