Ten Thoughts on The Void (2016)

1. You ever catch something streaming on Netflix and wish you had caught it in the theater? An actual popcorn and soda, left the house, put on pants movie theater. Me neither. Wait. There was this one time I watched a relatively obscure Canadian horror film called The Void. Now that would have been awesome in the theater. A midnight show, oh man, can you image watching The Void during a caffeine jitter fueled midnight movie? I may have to bulldoze my back yard to put up a theater so I can watch this and Fury Road over and over, as big as they gotta be.

2. Astron 6, I love you. Father's Day, not my bag, but Manborg was the love letter to early 90's Full Moon / Albert Pyun movies that I NEEDED at that point in my life. You killed it with this one, thus I am now your devoted Fanboy. I will fly into unreasonable Nerd Rage if I hear anyone talk badly about this or Manborg. Promise.

3. This is so gooey about Carpenter and 80's horror, that if you are the type that gets gooey over Carpenter and 80's horror, this flick will be your jam. Is it cribbing? Sure, but it is doing it so well, and it is engaging and visceral film making. It's homage, but like the totally rad Turbo Kid, it doesn't forget to be an awesome movie in its own right while gushing love all over its influences..

4. Flicks I caught reference to: From Beyond, The Beyond, Hellraiser 2, Halloween 2, Assault on Precinct 13, Prince of Darkness, The Thing, and Night of the Living Dead (but they all reference NOTLD, it's in the DNA). To top it off, the end credits use old Carpenter font. I love it when Carpenter Disciples use his font, like Neil Marshall in Doomsday, it makes me like their movie more, because at least I know they have good taste. Here's the wiki link on the font. 

5. The monster game in this is off the chain. No terrible CG video games here children. This is hardcore Clive Barker Muppet time. The design and execution will make you sing hymns to Cthulhu. These guys did not play around. The filmmakers do SFX for their day jobs, and you could feel their pent up passion for silicone and ultra-slime glop all over the frame. The creatures and demons put this into special next level territory. Well done, gents.

6. If you don't shoot these creations right, if you don't make an atmospheric movie around them, then it's all wasted.  Lucky for you, the cinematography and set design are the best. Especially the way they shot the burned out section of the isolated small town hospital. I was there man, it was very effective.

7. The acting is really good in this too. Nothing took me out of the movie as being "bad", and there are some real standout characters that I could root for. The best was the actress playing an intern in over her head, Ellen Wong. She's in the new GLOW show on Netflix. Need to check that out.

8. Horse riding Zombie Cowgirl from Survival of the Dead is the main heroine in this. She's great! I'm glad to see her again.

Yeah, that's her.

9. Well paced and never boring. You can have good monsters, and nice pretty pictures, but if you don't feel the movie is going anywhere, then who cares in the end? This movie has a great feel of escalating dread, building and building until you are trapped by its sick voodoo. Every time I thought about checking my phone, something so gross and bizarre happened that I snapped back to full attention.

10. So, I can't scream about this enough. I. Loved. This. Movie. If you wanted to pair it with something, maybe Prince of Darkness, but for something more recent, Frankenstein's Army was  another really cool monster movie with killer creature designs. It's not as good as this, but would be fun as the second half of a double feature. At a theater. Weep.

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

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