Review of The Void (2016) by Calderra — 03 Sep 2018

Just boring. A lot of people get pulled in by the nostalgia factor the moviemakers were clearly going for in the trailer, but this movie has only the most superficial connections to classic horror movies. It stars a small-town cop, there's practical monster effects... and that's it. If you want a movie that only has this and absolutely nothing else going for it, this movie was made for you.

For the rest of us, there's just nothing there. There's no story to speak of. The acting is bad, particularly the lead guy who is just terrible. The non-story is that a small-town cop finds a hurt guy in the middle of nowhere, takes him to the hospital, and... monsters happen. It's cliche after cliche. There's a bad guy doctor experimenting on people, there's tentacle monsters, there's monster pregnancy scares... none of this is a spoiler because you can just throw darts at other horror movies and they'll land on all the plot points.

Even the good reviews admit they have no clue what's going on with the plot, because NOTHING IS GOING ON. The actual plot is that the people who made this movie really like the triangle image you see in the trailer. I'm not kidding. The opening of the movie is a triangle, the climax of the movie is a triangle, the end of the movie is a triangle. Whoa, three triangles, deep symbolism bro.

The pacing is the very worst part. The very first scene of the film is a murder. After that the movie never goes more than 15 minutes between action scenes. You don't get time to know your characters, you don't get time to know your setting, so the monsters are running around who knows where attacking who knows who. Who cares?

My summary is: Money isn't the only thing separating mediocre filmmakers from good ones. If you stripped the budget out of a really good horror movie, you'd still have a good horror movie. The original Halloween is a great example- the main special effect is they painted a William Shatner mask white (and yes that's the real story of that iconic mask). The Void has tons of money, they spend it on a ton of special effects, and I was yawning for most of the runtime. Would Halloween have been better if they'd thrown in a dozen gloopy, bloody monsters? I don't think so. Maybe you do. But this just isn't for me.