The Empty Man is an American supernatural horror-thriller film directed by David Prior. It stars James Badge Dale, Marin Ireland, Stephen Root, Ron Canada, Robert Aramayo, Joel Courtney, and Sasha Frolova. It was released on 23rd October 2020 in theaters and is now available via Video On Demand.
Four friends in 1995 – Greg (Evan Jonigkeit), Paul (Aaron Poole), Fiona (Jessica Matten), and Ruthie (Virginia Kull) are hiking in the mountains of Bhutan. Paul founds a bottle or a flute-like instrument and he blows into it and after that, he starts to hear some whispers and he accidentally falls in one of the fissures on the rocks. Greg goes in and sees a scary big skeleton in that cave whereas Paul is sitting in front of it. Paul says to Greg, "Touch me and you'll die". I'm not going to say what happens after this.
Cut to 2018, Missouri, former detective James Lasombra (James Badge Dale) is working in a security store. He's close to his friend Nora's (Marin Ireland) teenage daughter, Amanda Quail (Sasha Frolova) who soon runs away from her home and Nora calls James for help and sees a message written in blood in a mirror "The Empty Man made me do it." He then decides to investigate this matter on his own. James visits one of Amanda's friend Devara Walsh (Samantha Logan), as all of her friends are now missing and she tells him that a couple of nights ago, she, Amanda, Brandon (Joel Courtney), Julianne (Marijke Bezhuidenhout), Meyer (Connor Dowds), Lisa (Jamie-Lee Money), and Duncan (Owen Teague) were having fun near the bridge. Then Amanda tries to summon The Empty Man and all of them blow a bottle they found there. That's how you can call him, just go to a bridge after dark, find an empty bottle and you blew it and think about him then something would happen.
The next day James goes by the same bridge for his investigation and finds a bottle and he blows into it. He also starts to hear whispers like someone is calling his name and further investigation leads him to a cult called the Pontifix Institute. So who's the leader of this cult? What will happen when James will encounter The Empty Man? Will he be able to find Amanda and the rest of her missing friends?
Based on Cullen Bunn and Vanesa R. Del Rey's graphic novel The Empty Man, the overall premise is interesting. This film's screen story and screenplay are by David Prior. It follows the same formula of writing just like it was in Slender Man or Bye Bye Man presenting them as an urban legend. With attractive lines inscribed in the official poster cleverly, "The first night you hear him, the second night you see him, the third night he finds you", it will manage to grab your attention.
But what after that? Just keep reading. The movie starts with a terrific 22 minutes kind of short movie which shows the origin of this entity. This is the strongest portion of the whole movie. Set in the desert of snow, the locations and the vibes are super creepy here and the cave scene is terrifying with the grand skeleton who's shown sitting holding a stone is the biggest highlight of the film. The film just gets better and better until the film's name pops up on the screen and the same story moves to now Missouri.
With its 2 hours 16 minutes runtime, this film is overstretched and offer nothing new in terms of storyline and characters. It follows the same track of The Empty Man urban legend who's very famous among the teens and now they go missing. James, don't know why also blows into the bottle and starts to experience the same thing that Paul was experiencing in the first 22 minutes.
The film changes its track from mystery horror to an investigation thriller and uncovering a conspiracy leading him to a cult whose leader is like an antenna who transmits. David Prior keeps The Empty Man in so much fog and mystery, that the narrations go haywire and become boring and unconvincing too because of its characters which don't come out to be solid and effective.
James Badge Dale is the only one carrying this long boring film on his shoulders but neither his performance nor the film sadly has that magic to give this a try. Marin Ireland is also just about fine as Nora. Sasha Frolova as Amanda tries to keep the mystery alive and Joel Courtney from The Kissing Booth and Super 8 is just wasted.
The cinematography by Anastas Michos is excellent and the production design by Craig Lathrop is also eye catchy and the music is good too. The editing by Andrew Buckland and David Prior is poor. It could have been a 1.5-hour film, then it could have worked well.
The Empty Man, as the name suggests is empty. David Prior tries very hard with this film to fill it with all the horror aspects out there but alas, the only one thing I see is boredom. This film is unnecessarily long and the mystery becomes very irritable after some time as nothing comes out clear and even The Empty Man has an appearance of less than a minute which is very much disappointing.
Rating:- 1.5/5
Now on Video On Demand.
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