Monday 26 June 2017

Tendril Is The Night [Review: The Void]

When policeman Daniel Carter finds a wounded man in the road and drives him to a nearby hospital, he and the other inhabitants find themselves trapped, surrounded by monks with triangular hoods and at the mercy of whatever is already inside.

The Void is a Canadian horror movie, made on an Indiegogo budget and released in 2016. It's an original story but heavily inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, demonstrating everything that makes a good Lovecraft horror. It's not just about the tentacles, you know:
  • Life from another dimension
  • Science confounded by the supernatural
  • Contact leads to insanity
  • A cult of murderous human worshippers
  • And yes, it's still mostly about the tentacles...

Performances are great, particularly from Aaron Poole and Kathleen Munroe. The film relies heavily on special effects rather than visual effects for the creature scenes, these are impressively gruesome and a lot of fun, channeling John Carpenter's The Thing and other classics. I have nothing against CGI. Nothing! But I have great respect for the art of the special effect and it can lead to a film with quite a different look and feel, something I also found when I watched the indie sci-fi film Hunter Prey, reviewed here.