The Empty Man

You've had a bad week. Your friends are acting the maggot and you're pissed off with them. You need to relax. And what better way is there to relax than a nice day at a spa. To ease your tensions you start off with a few minutes in the sauna. The steam surrounds you and your stresses melt away. God it's lovely. Just perfect. Then a shocking pain fills your being. Someone has stuck something sharp into your face. Then again and again and again and again. You hit the tiles and die watching the blood ebb from your shattered visage. Your relaxing day has just gone to shit courtesy of the Empty Man.

1995. 4 friends hiking in the mountain of Bhutan discover something unearthly in a cavern. It ruins them. 2018. Former police man James Lasombra (James Badge Dale) has had a dreadful year. Tragedy has taken everything he held dear and he's a shell of his former self. A neighbour, Nora (Marin Ireland ), who he's friendly with tells him her daughter Amanda (Sasha Frolova) has vanished and he uses his detecting skills to figure out what's happening. He finds whispers of something occult, something off, something eerie, an urban myth that the teenagers in town have stumbled onto. Then he hears of a cult built around that myth. Surely there's can't be any truth to a supernatural rumour. Can there?

At 137 minutes long The Empty Man is a good 30 minutes longer than most horror films released these days. There's a definite sag in the middle section when the story unfortunately broadens it's horizons by bringing in the kind of world building that a cynical person might say is laying the roots for a franchise. But I gotta say I liked this one. It's beautifully shot, that Bhutan prologue is a hell of an eyecatcher and there's some stunning imagery dotted throughout (that birdseye zoom in a map and a terrifying bonfire procession). It's well acted. James Badge Dale, a reliable actor in what ever he turns up in commits fully to the lead, ensuring things stay grounded no matter how batshit crazy the story gets. And best of all, it's mythos is spooky as hell. It's genuinely scary. A sad rarity in mainstream American horror.

I love a horror that eschews cheap jump scares and The Empty Man does just that. Instead it uses it's running time to build up a crawling, cumulative feeling of dread, dotting it's tension with well crafted moments of horror and some startling violence (it deserves it's 18 cert)  until we get an ending that might remind scary movie fans of a couple of 20th century genre classics while doing it's own thing also. It's a climax that feels earned and it's great to see a horror film committing to it's story fully with no cheap cops outs or fake outs. 

The Empty Man is available to rent at google movies now. It's long running time and it's disturbing imagery will be offputting to some but it's a decent chiller.