Ditching humour for horror

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This article was published 31/03/2017 (3351 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three of five members of the Winnipeg film collective Astron-6 have a hand in this low-budget horror offering. So, in addition to the Manitoba Classification Board’s content warning — “violence, gory scenes, coarse language” — here’s another caution: it’s best not to go into The Void expecting Astron’s caustic sense of humour.

While the plot could be pitched as a John Carpenter combo plate — the siege elements of Assault on Precinct 13 combined with the slimy-mutant-monster elements of The Thing — this is not a pastiche in the same way as the Astron-6 outing The Editor gleefully parodied the excesses of giallo, or Manborg mocked the absurdities of post-apocalyptic 1980s action.

Writer-directors Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski go into this movie with the relatively pure intentions of making something legitimately scary.

https://youtu.be/JAcknEyohpE

In a sparsely populated backwater. Officer Carter (Aaron Poole) stumbles across a wounded druggie and takes him to the only hospital that will take him, an institution that’s apparently at the end of its days, with only one doctor on duty (the venerable Kenneth Welsh) and a couple of patients, including Astron-6’s Matthew Kennedy as an early sacrificial victim and a very pregnant young woman (Grace Munro) experiencing labour pains.

For Carter, it’s an uncomfortable situation because his ex-wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe) is on duty and their parting took place in the wake of losing their child.

The tension is ramped up considerably when the hospital is invaded by a couple of apparently crazed vigilantes hunting for the aforementioned drug addict.

But then things start taking a turn for the supernaturally weird when the people holed up in the hospital are surrounded outside by creepy cloaked figures bearing an eerie triangle insignia on their faces.

One nurse turns inexplicably homicidal. A weird, Cthulu-esque monster puts in an appearance. And we haven’t even gone to the basement yet.

At this point, it becomes clear the film is aiming for horror that transcends jump-scares and the liberal splattering of gallons of fake blood. Gillespie and Kostanski are aiming for the kind of deeper existential horror of H.P. Lovecraft, suggestive of alternate planes of existence where fear and despair rule.

On that score, the film is not bad. It helps the cast is solid, especially Poole as the progressively freaked-out hero and Welsh, who classes the joint up as the sepulchral-voiced doctor who harbours a few secrets of his own.

It’s also a positive that the film doesn’t resort to lots of computer-animated effects.

With its emphasis on practical special effects, The Void has a kind of tactile approach that grounds the horror in physical reality, as opposed to a cartoon-y videogame universe.

Truth be told, though, it’s not all that scary. Kostanski creates some impressive monster effects, but they’re often too underlit or over-edited to fully appreciate.

Still, given a minimal budget, this is an impressive effort by the former Winnipeggers, who have undoubtedly learned a harsh lesson about straying from the safety net of parody: creating a good, serious horror movie is not as easy as it looks.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing