The void is like a homage to 80’s horror movies, and while this is a good thing for me it also sadly makes it appear to be low budget and therefore undesirable. I’d not heard of it until recently and was not aware of any advertising for it back in 2016. I’ve found if one persists they will find an interesting philosophical piece here about loss, dealing with pain, and about facing monstrous things in ones grief.
This story focuses on a deputy police sheriff Daniel, who while on a break sees a drugged up man come out of the woods and fall in front of his cruiser. This starts a chain of events that leads Daniel through many trials until his ultimate end.
Daniel takes the man to a hospital where his estranged wife Allison works. The hospital is in a state of partial closure following a fire, and the staff talk about being moved elsewhere. The first strange occurrence of the movie is here where Daniel makes sure to ask the Sheriff’s dispatch to call ahead to the hospital, but when he arrives he finds that they are not aware that he is bringing in a patient. This is an indication that Daniel has entered an abnormal place, not unlike Silent Hill from the game/movie. One can imagine a threshold being crossed from reality to another dimension.
The hospital itself is run by a doctor Richard Powell who is up to no good. We learn that Richard and Daniel grieve for dead children, and this is the core of this story with both men trying to deal with loss in their own ways. The movie is an exploration of how far men will go to cope and the things they will do to manage their loss. Other analyses of this movie don’t seem to recognise this fact, and while they speak of the movie being a metaphor I think they miss this aspect of the story.
If this movie is a metaphor then, it is a visualisation of the horrors of loss, of the PTSD like remembering of loss, and of what acts people will take to avoid dealing with the loss directly and moving on.
In the story we see that Doctor Richard has gone to extreme lengths to attempt to resurrect his daughter, and through ritual and sacrifice he has opened The Void of the movie’s title. to another world and to an ancient power that he believes will allow him to restore the life of his daughter. Like in all good horror movies his acts have consequences for him and those around him. There are homages to the Hellraiser movie series in this one and particularly to the second Hellbound movie, with the Doctor being the architect of the horrors and the victim of them. There are also small arty segments that are reminiscent of Beyond The Black Rainbow movie
The kind Doctor Powell is seemingly killed at the mid point of the movie only to be reborn as a flipped hellish version of himself, and maybe this was part of his deal with whatever Lovecraftian entity lives in the void and projects itself into the Hospital. We learn that it is his attempts at resurrecting his daughter before his death have brought about the bleeding of horrors from the void into the real world (presumably including the masked guards outside the hospital) and so far his efforts have failed to resurrect his daughter, so post death he is trying again, maybe with an idea that “this time” it will work.
Daniel’s story is similar to the Doctor’s although his grief is not as far along. Richard lost what appeared to be a teenage daughter but Daniel and Allison lost a baby. Daniel’s loss is fresher and is different in that he couldn’t have had a relationship with his child, so his story focuses on how it affects him and his wife. Daniel’s grief has not festered for as long as the doctor and we are given the idea that the loss of his child was very recent. Daniel has a kind of distant denial of his situation and has not yet moved through the stages of grief, thus he is able to seem on the surface as “normal” but as we see in the movie he is far from okay. Clearly the loss of the baby has impacted his relationship with Allison and they have split. He appears to be toughing it out by focusing on his work, but his work leads him back to the centre of the loss.
Daniel is the hero of the film because he ends the evil ultimately reunites with his wife, perhaps as a token of gratitude from the void for stopping Doctor Richard Powell. However he is not much of a hero in the classical sense. There is maybe a suggestion here of Richard wanting Allison for himself and so Daniel also rescues her from him. Perhaps in a metaphorical sense she was looking for love elsewhere after the split and found it in her boss and had an affair with him. Daniel then fights for her love and wins it back. Sadly, Allison is used as another attempt by the Doctor to resurrect his daughter, and is discarded by Richard as a failure.
Daniel’s job in the structure of the movie is that of silent narrator and as viewers we slowly learn what is going on through his eyes. He clumsily lurches from one painful failure to the next and from his point of view all events lead back to the Doctor and his wife. I didn’t like him as a protagonist character but understand why the movie was made this way. As a rule I don’t like movies where the protagonist is made an idiot for the sake of moving the plot from one event to the next and they do stupid things for the the “horror” set pieces, and yet i liked this movie overall, perhaps chiefly beacuse of my own life experiences and for it’s references to other movies and games that I previously enjoyed.
Ultimately Daniel defeats the Doctor and closes the portal to the void, and this is a victory because the Lovecraftian terrors cease in the real world, as evidenced in the final shots of the hospital where the movie’s colouring shifts back to normal and the entities and guards are gone. Daniel and Allison are seen holding hands inside the void itself having reconciled their love, however they are both presumably dead. So in a metaphorical sense I will say that they have overcome their grief and their problems, and now stand together facing a new and unknown world without their child but with renewed love for each other.
Nurse Beverly is the first time we see the horror aspect of the void in its tentacled glory, she appears to be a victim of Doctor Richard’s scheming as well, and perhaps she has been discarded from his implanting ritual as a failure. She is seen stabbing a sleeping patient in the eye, which feels significant but I’m not sure how, and this is likely an act of revenge against the Doctor for being discarded, or maybe more simply because the patient is male and cannot become pregnant and is of no use, I don’t know. Anyhow she turns into a void monster after killing the patient and being killed herself, and we get a glimpse of life as the void sees it, which is not very palatable.
Young Maggie ultimately turns out to be the host of the Doctor’s reborn daughter, and it is hinted that the father is unknown and is not present, so it would make sense that it is the Doctor himself. This time the pregnancy is successful and the Doctor’s daughter is reborn, as a void monster. I’m not sure this is what he expected or wanted, but I seem to remember there being a comment in the movie about life in the void being somewhat different to that of this dimension. Life is life I suppose!
One could look at the hospital building itself as a living ceremonial entity, crossing over from another dimension, with the upper floor as a vestibule, it’s a basement as crypt, and the morgue as an altar room, and the whole thing is like a temple to the void including a congregation of void priests keeping people inside. The hospital reconfigures its rooms, stairs, and corridors to confuse and trap people, and in a very Hellraiser’esq moment; a fleeing person runs from a void monster as the walls close in. They escape into reality as the walls slam shut behind them, separating the two beings and dimensions.
In summary then this is a story of loss and how people fail to face it like adults and move on in their lives. These people are stuck in the past and relive their experiences over and over until it drives them mad. They may try to pretend that the prior events didn’t happen, or may try to reverse the events by recreating what once was, but both approaches are doomed to failure and are merely a fantasy. It also shows the fallout on others around the person, and how it drags other people into their personal hell and destroys them too. The movie is a warning that the only way forward is to move on with ones life and to put past events to bed for good. It of course shows graphically the effects of not moving on, but also shows a conclusion and a future of sorts.
I enjoyed this movie, but it wasn’t directed as well as I’d like, and some of the above understanding must be “extracted” from the movie’s focus, which is on action and horror, as a result the story is often not well presented. It’s like there were competing motives for this movie; one person wanted a story-free body horror gore fest, and another wanted a touching heartfelt story focusing on the horrors people go through when facing loss of a child.
I have had some experience myself in this area of life and this is probably why it worked for me personally. You’ll be pleased to read that I faced grief directly and moved on without any horrible side effects on others!