The Void - Written Review

Eddie here and tonight I'm reviewing a 2017 limited release 1980s throwback horror film, The Void, directed by a Canadian film group known as Astron 6 and stars Aaron Pool, Kenneth Welsh, Ellen Wong, and Art Hindle. After a police officer drops off an injured teen to a local understaffed hospital, cult-like figures surround the hospital trapping the officer and 11 others inside with no escape. Little does anyone know that the hospital is a gateway to a much dark place that makes Hell look like paradise. I first heard about this film by seeing many advertisements on both Facebook and YouTube. Taking a look at the trailers, it really captured me into wanting to see it since it took a lot of influence from classic 1980s era horror films, which I find to be the best decade for horror films. I gotta say, I enjoyed it and yes it does have flaws but the fact that it's trying to be an 80s horror throwback, we all know that they'll have flaws, yet there's something about them that makes you still enjoy the hell out of them anyways . Though I will say the story structure feels like an 80s horror film but visually it doesn't look like one, which was a small disappointment. As for my pros, I really enjoyed the gore in this film a lot. This is one of the most gruesome films I've seen in awhile. Some of the cast performances were tolerable even though you can tell it's somewhat low budget acting like most 80s films are known for. The practical effects in this film are some of the best I've seen in a long time. They look like the same effects used from John Carpenter's The Thing. It does have some artistic shot scenes where you see this triangle - like figure appear in the sky with a shot of the woods and these cult-like dudes with knives standing around symbolizing the victims seeing this Hellish-like world. Funny though because some of those shots look like scenes Kristy sees in Hellbound: Hellraiser II. Later on in the story, it starts to feel like a Rob Zombie directed film because the Hellish-like creatures were put together by a monstrous creature that looks like a Doctor Satan-type like in House of 1000 corpses. As for my cons, I do wish we could of seen more of these creatures have a kill scene instead of the same couple of creatures that do the majority of them. Also, we don't get much history on why these events are happening, why the hospital was chosen as the gateway, what are these cult people and where they came from, which kind of disappointed me. This film does seem to jump around alot and it's pretty much straight forward to its quick anti-climatic scene. Overall, try not to take it too seriously and look at it as if its a non-serious blood bath 80s throwback. I'm going to give The Void a 6/10. For those that have seen it, what are your thoughts on it? Leave me a comment below and I'll see you on my next review.