The Void. 2017. Directed and Written by Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski.
Starring Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Daniel Fathers, Kathleen Munroe, Ellen Won, Mik Byskov, Art Hindle, Stephanie Belding, James Millington, Evan Stern, & Grace Munro.
Cave Painting Pictures/JoBro Productions & Film Finance
Rated R. 90 minutes.
Horror/Mystery/Sci-Fi
★★★★1/2
Everyone goes on and on about how this movie’s influenced by The Thing, which I’m sure is definitely true. I’d argue it’s more Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness than any of the master’s works. Others go on that it’s Lovecraftian, though I don’t agree totally; the filmmakers say it was their influence, and that’s fine. As I often preach, artistic intent doesn’t always have to equal concrete meaning to the audience.
Most of all, this is an original bit of sci-fi-ish horror on its own. Sure, it draws bits of heart from films co-writers Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski likely grew up watching. It throws back to the 1980s. To give their influences too much credit is to do a disservice to their horrific originality.
Many movies post-2010 seem to feel like throwback means an ’80s-type electronic score and a dark yet vibrant look. The Void has a wicked score, the sound is perfect. Best is the fact the team behind the film went with expert practical effects for the various creatures and abominations. Add these technical aspects to solid performances from one of my latest genre favourites Aaron Poole, as well as the great Kenneth Welsh (Windom Earle from Twin Peaks). This makes for one fine ride into the heart of darkness.
The Lovecraftian influence, the Carpenter roots, they’re fine. Gillespie and Kostanski are what matters. Their story, particularly how it’s told, works wonders on the suspense and tension which builds so dreadfully over the course of the first third of the film. Their directorial work is startling, with grim delight. We start out with an act of violence that’s inexplicable; at the time. From there, the writing-directing team unravel a tale of a cult offering sacrifices to an otherworldly entity called from the cosmos.
Production design on this one all around is fantastic. The location of the hospital is like they found a facility in the middle of nowhere, cultivating a mood all of its own. In addition, the costumes for the cult add to that atmosphere by sort of crashing down on top of the audience. When we first see them it’s a shocking moment, oh so excellent.
Not to mention the cinematography of Samy Inayeh (The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh; another great flick with Poole starring) makes everything feel hazy, terrifying, like a feverish nightmare even before the descent into utter madness and hell. The visual style is most definitely part of what gives it a throwback feel. The biggest part of that essence is the practical effects work, up there with some of the best in the genre.
Kostanski has an extensive background in makeup effects. He’s doing stuff on the new It, he worked on Clown, GirlHouse, Hannibal, and even worked as an uncredited prosthetics shop assistant for 2005’s Capote. Point being, he knows his shit. He uses his chops here, alongside Gillespie, whose resume is as impressive having worked on It and Suicide Squad as assistant art director (both of which his co-director and writer worked on). He was a graphic designer on Hannibal, too. He served as assistant art director on Atom Egoyan’s The Captive, and the underrated found footage 388 Arletta Avenue is his first art directing credit. These two artists together did something on this film which amazes, in the best horror kind of way.
The creatures involved in the descent to hell, as the characters of The Void explore the hospital basement, are totally wild! Some of the best stuff out there, truly. I can see why The Thing is used as comparison. Particularly when it comes to the final monster we witness birthed; like a combination of pieces of living things. A vicious finale creation. That isn’t it, though. Throughout the movie we see various creatures, and you can’t forget the other practical effects like the blood, et cetera. That seemingly simple stuff can often get lost in the shuffle for other, lesser horrors. Not these guys. The attention to detail is what drives this whole effort home.
Above anything else, the end and what the film builds to from the start is the payoff. I won’t spoil it. Just to say that I love the vision these guys brought to the visuals. There’s something wholly original in the way they presented the other world, where Dr. Powell (Welsh) intends on going. Those last shots are perfection, impressing upon us without words the tiny speck that is humanity on the entirety of the universe. Gorgeous, if not also disturbing.
I gave this film a 4 and 1/2 star rating (out of 5) because The Void does what two other similar movies, Baskin and Last Shift, didn’t do despite their awesomeness: it shows us an end result. What I mean is that those other two films, kick ass as they are, sort of end in a place where there’s ultimately no traction. Not saying nothing happens, if you check my reviews of them both I’m actually a huge fan (I’ve seen Baskin at least a dozen times).
The Void goes a step further, not only in its inventiveness and practical effects monster work, it also opts to go full-on cosmic. In this way, I concede that they touch on Lovecraft and his rightful idea about man’s insignificance to other much greater, larger, non-human entities out there in the universe; gods, if you will.
Again, I don’t like to lean so heavily only on influence. Gillespie and Kostanski deserve what’s due – praise, for a breathtaking wave of pure terror, start to finish. They’ll live on with this film, though I cannot wait to see their next project. These guys are the real fucking deal.
Director Michael McQuown sent me a screener for his and co-director Vincent J. Guastini’s independent film, 
My only beef, and I’ll get to this first before discussing what I enjoyed so much, is that the directing is mostly excellent. Then, they choose to show us too much. For the longest time what we only get glimpses of in frame is what drives the pulse-pounding terror. As you can see in the photo above, that’s a startling shot. Love that moment; freezing the frame only compounds the fear. However, the directors lose some of that momentum later when they choose to show this demonic figure up close for too long. They try offsetting this with the use of camera glitches (et cetera). But it never makes up for the undoing of the fright from seeing the creature long enough we can start picking out some of the less stellar aspects of its creation.
The tapes have an overall framing narrative, though I think that while there’s a connection between the tapes as a whole, it isn’t as connective as the filmmakers might hope. Mostly, I don’t feel that the connections are tight enough. The writing is interesting, at every turn. I can’t help think McQuown could’ve brainstormed something better to make them all into the cohesive unit the beginning (and mid-credits) speech we hear wishes it’d become. If this were tighter then it would’ve greatly improved the film.
For a low budget, non-studio film, The Dark Tapes has an impressive production value. This is one of the things that keeps even the lesser pieces involving, it’s better than the average indie found footage attempt. With so many of these sub-genre flicks saturating the market, incredibly easy to make on a shoestring to non-existent budget, it’s nice to see what’s so obviously a labour of horror love come to the screen from these directors.
After an unnerving opening scene the pace lags for an inordinately long time. The screenplay plays like a procedural, except it would’ve served better to get into more action or horror. There’s a definite intensity to the plot, there’s just a lack of any real tension. Romero could easily have done better by starting with a bigger heavier bang. The first scene is creepy, but after that it’s a near half hour before anything else significantly creepy and/or violent happens. This makes The Crazies a bit tedious for the first while. Yes, that does change. Doesn’t change quick enough.
This brings us to one of the best parts about the film. What’s scariest to me about the infection in this Romero story is how the people inflicted with it seem like the same, regular people they were before, just gone totally insane – unlike zombies from Romero’s other works, these crazies aren’t hideously deformed, or even dead, they’re human beings gone utterly mental. The clearest, most precise look at this horror comes when the survivors make it to a farmhouse. Plot-wise, the movie gets most brutal and grim at this point. We see here how infection can drive people to the most sickeningly nasty recesses of their own mind.
My chief problem with this picture is that it lacks the appropriate amount of horror. What we do get is good. There’s far too much drama and dialogue that doesn’t necessarily do justice to the characters or the plot and story. If Romero went harder at the horror in more scenes, The Crazies would be a genre classic, rather than a mediocre footnote on his career as director.
With so many vampire movies out there, especially after the fame of the awful Twilight series, new innovations in the plots, or even the storytelling itself, are necessary. Daybreakers is fresh and exciting. Not everything is 100% original, but the film uses vampire love and what we’ve learned from vampire flicks in a non-conventional way. It could’ve been a serious film, all the way. Halfway through the plot things dive into a bit of silly action and other developments rather than stick with its sobering look at a vampire economy falling apart; a vision of how people today in society burn through their resources, augmented into an action-horror-science fiction picture. Although it ultimately becomes a mess of bloody action, there’s a lot of great stuff to enjoy. Not often do we get an Ethan Hawke genre flick, such as his other turn in Sinister a few years after this movie. So with him, Willem Dafoe, and the glorious Sam Neill upfront and centre, there are nice performances to help swallow the ridiculousness of the film’s last third. Directing-writing partners Michael and Peter Spierig give Daybreakers a steely, clinical look to take us inside a world dominated by vampires. Even when it falters, this is a better than most vampire film because its story takes a unique path. Daybreakers offers interesting themes and an action packed finale, despite being better than what it gives us.
The vampire economy running on blood has left some vampires homeless, starving. Quickly there’s a sense of a class division even amongst the vamps. Rich and well-to-do vampires have better stuff, some people have more access. Then there are the remaining humans who’ve become second class citizens, to the point of being used for a blood source. Here, the rich now literally sucking the blood of the poor. Just like nowadays, as big businessmen and politicians bleed us, figuratively, dry.
As I mentioned, the style is something to behold. A very cold, blue-tinted colour palette makes everything feel much how what you’d imagine the vampire would look like. There’s also tons of wonderful makeup and lighting to give the vampires a frightening appearance; ghastly, almost genuinely tough to look at sometimes. Dig the eyes, they look cat-like, animal. Daybreakers relies a bit too heavily on CGI at times, although the CGI they do use is pretty damn solid. Such as a couple of the action scenes later in the film, which are well executed, and they’re limited so as not to get overbearing. The best one is when a military Humvee slides into a beam that impales the driver, followed by a large explosion. Perfect use of CGI.
Elvis (Willem Dafoe) adds a great element to the story with his cured vampirism. Very interesting and part of why I love his role. The vampire logic in his idea for a cure is fun, adds something exciting to the vampire sub-genre. After the point where Elvis shows up, and Edward undergoes the experiment, the plot kind of goes to shit. There’s definitely a couple moments worth seeing, the action isn’t totally unwatchable. But you simply can’t help wonder what could’ve been. There’s an unbeatable sequence in the finale that is perfect – when cured people are bitten again, their blood turns other vampires into humans, so this causes a frenzy of biting, killing, gore splashing everywhere.
An interest of mine, as well as the minor in my Honours degree, has always been Philosophy. Even the times when I can’t grasp a concept the entire school as a whole is intriguing. There are so many different philosophies, ranging the gamut of Eastern and Western Philosophy, many great thinkers since time immemorial. So what happens when you take the ideas of many philosophies, create an interesting, modern story, then wrap the whole innovative package inside an action film?
We’ve certainly seen point-of-view films, mostly the horror genre tackling them, though they are out there in several genres. Right back to 1947’s big screen Raymond Chandler adaptation, Lady in the Lake. So the film world is not completely foreign to this idea. However, Hardcore Henry takes it further than any other film really has before. Upping the stakes, director-writer Ilya Naishuller takes that first-person perspective and uses very similar to how it’s done in video games. Instead of trying to keep it simple, innovate at a basic level, Naishuller, a handful of cinematographers, and a massively talented team craft this into a spectacularly creative effort of science fiction-action madness. If anything, you’ve got to admire the work put in. So many of the action sequences are mind boggling. The camera work is something to behold, as the whole team behind the film’s look makes us feel like we’re constantly inside one of those video games it hopes to emulate.
There’s never much rest for the wicked here. Constantly, Henry takes you on his fascinating run of survival. In the opening ten minutes you get a solid ahead of what’s going on in terms of character, plot. Then after that it’s headlong into action. Love the head-mounted camera they work with here; most of the work is done on GoPro Hero3 Black Edition cameras. Lots of films have used these types of rigs, but this film pushes its efficiency to the limit. It holds up well, too. Absolutely some shaky moments. I’ve got to say: on the whole, it keeps things looking nice for the majority of the action. Plus, it allows us that first-person shooter look. As if you’re literally playing a video game.
This brings me to another point. Certain critics out there seemed to find their excitement waning after awhile because they say there’s not enough character or emotion to keep the film’s interest. I totally disagree. There’s an enormous amount of mystery. We get little slices of the characters, the situation, what’s happening at the base of it all. But ultimately so much of Hardcore Henry remains mysterious. I mean, you really don’t find it at all interesting to ponder the origins of Akan? There’s even a prequel comic called “Hardcore Akan” to flesh it out. Then with the entire story of Henry himself, we get a few answers yet most of it stays shrouded in darkness. Plus, as much as I love Die Hard, for instance, it isn’t John McClane and his personal journey that makes the movie so exciting (though his character’s story itself makes things better), it’s the action. It never hurts to have an expanded character background and all that. But when I come for action and adventure, I come to see the wild gunfights, the stunts, the exaggerated yet accomplished sequences of utter destruction. Again, Henry is a good character, as well. He’s just not loaded with exposition at every turn. This whole criticism I don’t get. If you stick with the movie, you get lots of character, plenty of emotion, right next to the action. Maybe some supposed critics aren’t watching close enough, perhaps too concerned with eating popcorn and candy. I don’t know.
Personally, to give this any less than 4&1/2 stars is doing an injustice. Once more I say, yes, this has its faults. There are a couple bits that either could’ve been changed, or maybe even improved. But mostly, Hardcore Henry is exciting as it should be, its chaos is wonderfully controlled, so that it doesn’t come off as never ending shaky cam uselessness. The frenetic style keeps us in the world of a video game from start to finish. Ilya Naishuller does a fantastic job with the direction and overall as a writer he keeps things interesting. The mix of adventure, action, and science fiction together here is a whole bag of breathtaking film making. Not sure why so many put this movie down. Of course, it isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. No movie will please all the viewers. Hardcore Henry is so much fun. I had a blast watching it. Make sure to see it on the big screen if you can, if not just sit back in front of a nice big television when you can rent it on VOD and have at some action anarchy. Don’t let people turn you away from this because they say there isn’t enough character, emotion, or whatever – there is, underneath so much of Henry’s adventurous journey and its barbarous action. See it, be the judge.
Perhaps why The Bay works and feels better than so much of the other found footage fodder spewed out over the past four or five years is due to the fact director Barry Levinson is neither someone who we’d expect to tackle horror, nor is he the type of director you’d imagine would veer into this particular sub-genre. Nevertheless, what results is an interesting piece of work. It isn’t always flat out horror. What Levinson does best with this story is provide a raw and honest look at a community that ends up descending into terror because of ecological issues. Of course it dives headlong into science fiction. It’s real feeling sci-fi. Even after the movie nearly turns into a creature feature, though one that smartly avoids an actual creature per se, Levinson is able to retain that truthful sense of atmosphere. In part, that’s due to the found footage style emulating scientific recordings, news reports, and much more. Also, it has to do with the writing, the believability of the story and its plots, as well as the fact there’s such an excellent sense of mystery which weaves itself around the film until all its shocking events unfold. Critics like Ebert and some others accused this movie of not actually having any horror. Is that a joke? Sure, fear is subjective and we’re not all afraid of the same things. However, I find it tough to say Levinson doesn’t draw out all the terror inherent in this story. In a day and age where people are questioning the practices of Monsanto and other big companies, and the governments both federal and municipal which make deals with them (often without consideration of the effects it actually has on citizens in lieu of big pay days and incentives), The Bay is a remarkably poignant bit of horror cinema that capitalises on the found footage sub-genre to make its story real and visceral, no matter if it’s technically a work of science fiction.
What’s so eerie to me is that gradually once you figure out something’s wrong with the water, everything after that (and before it if you go back to watch through again like I’ve done several times) is painted in such a sinister light. You don’t even need to go back through honestly, as before the first ten minutes are through we’ve figured out that something is not quite right.
There’s genuinely unsettling body horror happening, which is another reason why I dig the film. Levinson and his crew make the horror so viscerally nasty that it’s something you could see coming from a guy like David Cronenberg. Instead of focusing solely on the nastiness, there’s a good deal of psychological horror on display. Intensity cranks up near the end with streets literally lined by corpses, people getting eaten alive from the inside out. But more importantly the government failures on many levels become perfectly clear, if they weren’t already before. The fact the divers were discovered a couple weeks beforehand, as well as the government worrying about panic spreading after the fact, we’re able to scarily understand how these types of things could happen then find themselves being covered up. Couple that with the fact all the footage we’re seeing was supposedly confiscated and the government gives a lackadaisical response and explanation for the outbreak, then Levinson and writer Michael Wallach make sure to retain the raw elements of what makes The Bay so interesting. Because it’s partly the horror, all those nasty bits and pieces of gross out practical effects and the wildly chaotic moments that make your pulse pound. Yet the most interesting aspect to me is the fact this plays so well as a mockumentary, elevated to a sci-fi/horror hybrid. As opposed to most found footage films out there, aside from a pack of well made titles, this one’s got genuine characters which are furthermore paralleled with genuine performances from the actors to make the reality of The Bay that much more believable. Ultimately, you can’t ask for any better from a horror/sci-fi film than for it to feel realistic. And above anything else I certainly can’t fault Levinson for lacking an honest touch.
This is most definitely a 4-star found footage horror. It has the perfect bits of sci-fi and a mysterious, engaging script. Barry Levinson is sometimes hit or miss for me, but always interesting. The Bay is one of his most recent efforts I dig most. He hits hard at the ecological horror here and perhaps, using his studies of the Chesapeake Bay for the basis of this creepy little flick, says something viable about our dependence on local politicians to make big deals which affect the safety of their citizens. Who knows. Maybe it’s just a fun bit of popcorn horror. Either way, this is one effective bit of cinema and I hope we’ll get some more of these types of found footage movies in the future. Would be nice if Levinson did another creepy movie because he’s absolutely got the chops.
I’ve got a fondness for the monster/creature feature sub-genre of horror and science fiction. There are so many classic, old school Hollywood flicks that have iconic monsters. Everything from 
As one of the crowned jewels of the Canadian film industry, David Cronenberg continually fascinates me as a filmmaker and storyteller. So much of his work deals in body horror, particularly his early films up until the post-2000s. The Brood may be one of his most impressive works of body horror. It tackles several aspects of psychology, as well as the idea that psychological symptoms manifest themselves physically, which they do. However, Cronenberg turns this idea into something gruesome, personal, something macabre and beyond reality. Yet all the while this film treats everything so clinically. Even with the wild sci-fi elements, Cronenberg’s 1979 classic is so painfully honest about its real life aims. Everything he has ever done with body horror is a metaphor; to how we live in this world, how we relate to it, to others, and everything in between. Although taking swipes at the field of psychology in certain respects, The Brood is also about the rift between people that not only causes damage in their relationship but to everyone surrounding them, too. Above all, the rage of this movie stands in for that which two people sometimes experience when their relationship is at odds – an all-encompassing rage that gives birth to nasty things we’d rather believe never existed in us.
When it comes to found footage, a film can often help itself by using a gimmick. Now, that does not always help. Although, sometimes the sub-genre is at its best when a film not only has a good story but also an interesting gimmick. 
I’d been excited for a while after hearing of The Survivalist, as I kept on hearing there was something different about it than other films like it. You will no doubt think of many different science fiction romps where the end of the world is upon us, perhaps everything from The Road to Mad Max and more. However, there is a quiet elegance, a beauty about writer-director Stephen Fingleton’s debut feature film which you won’t always find in other similarly themed movies; this is certainly more close to the Cormac McCarthy adaptation than the early Mel Gibson star vehicle.
