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BFI London Film Festival 2016: The Void Review

By on 16/10/2016

It was a few years ago now that I came across a proof of concept trailer for a movie called The Void that since then was forever etched into my consciousness. The trailer blew my friends and me away and was the topic of many horror movie conversations with its return to old school horror practical effects story telling in a whole dominated by CGI. The Void has finally been completely following a successful crowd funding campaign and was shown at the BFI London Film Festival and I was able to catch a viewing

Set over one cold Canadian winters night, The Void starts when a police officer comes across an injured man in the street that had been attacked and takes him to hospital. Things get strange very quickly and they are caught between a weird cloaked cult who have surrounded the hospital, a pair of mysterious strangers who are hunting the injured man and patients in the hospital transforming into some gruesome and inhuman creatures

The Void is a throwback to movies of the 80s

Its almost like a sort of cross between Assault on Precinct 13 meets The Thing was a heavy dose of David Chroneberg to boot. This is a movie for hardcore horror fans and is full of what the fuck moments. The use of practical effects over CGI in The Void is really refreshing and there were plenty of scenes of great transformation and gore

But overall the movie is let down by the convoluted plot and the weird character intensions that are at many times difficult to understand. The movie also descends into some really strange territory that was quite CGI heavy that I wasn’t so much a fan of

The Void is a movie that the very much for the throwback horror purists.

For those not so familiar or such a fan of those sort of movies wouldn’t get so much from this movie and I wouldn’t recommend it to you.

Although I wasn’t the biggest fan of the movie it shows some serious potential and will be very interest with what Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Konstanski do next as they have some serious potential

Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Konstanski were in attendance at the viewing for a Q&A about the film making process and future projects

The Void