THE VOID
Canada, 2016, 90 minutes, colour.
Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Daniel Fathers, Kathleen Munroe, Ellen Wong, Mik Byskov, Art Hindle, Stephanie Belding.
Directed by Jeremy Gillespie, Stephen Kostanksi.
A Canadian horror film produced with crowdfunding, starring veteran Canadian actors Kenneth Welsh and Art Hindle.
This is the kind of horror film that devotees really like, the type of film that is shown in special festivals, Monster Fest, Underground Horror… (Where, in fact, it has won some wards.)
There is certainly a mysterious opening, a man and woman fleeing a house, an older man and a younger man firing at them, setting the woman alight, the man struggling to the highway where he is found by the local police officer and taken to the hospital.
Once within the hospital, most of the characters are trapped, although the father and son invade the hospital, threatening the man found by the wayside. But, there is a glimpse of a hooded person and then the revelation that outside the hospital there is a whole host of similarly hooded people, menacing.
The mystery deepens within the hospital, the roadside victim becoming more manic, the appearance of the woman who was burnt, peeling off her face, the local doctor attacked and slashed, a young woman there to give birth, attended by her grandfather, and the nurse in charge, the sheriff’s estranged wife, still grieving because they lost a child.
Quite a set up then for interactions, violent outbursts.
The sheriff then decides to go with the mysterious father and son down into the basement of the hospital, which leads to further basements, and the site of mysterious rituals where a cult figure, the local doctor, urges people to sacrifice themselves so that they can be with him in the cult.
Along the way, there are various exciting episodes, the sheriff and the two men trying to rescue a rifle from the sheriff’s van, and a nervous nurse having to assist with the birth of the child but unable to help with a caesarean, various violent outbursts and shooting.
One for the monster Fest fans.
