The Empty Man (2020) Dir: David Prior
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I hadn't particularly planned on watching this David Prior directed horror, but boredom drove me to doing so, and, for what it's worth, I don't entirely regret it. The film had the look of another standard, mediocre, supernatural horror, and while it certainly was this in many respects, it at least did some of those things well.
The film half subverted expectation with the mixing of paranormal and occult horror subgenres, but the execution of this was rather inconsistent. The whole trigger for the paranormal entity to awaken is just awful levels of bad. The implicit horror of the film was really good, but the scenes in which the so-called 'Empty Man' are shown are awful. I genuinely believe that the film would have been better without them.
The first hour of the film was really interesting, but then one really bad scene completely ruined my immersion and meant I had to consciously try to refocus on the film. The scene in question was just so poorly filmed it was jarring and, quite frankly, laughable.
From then on, the film took a pretty bizarre turn. The sinister and intriguing set-up is wasted on a weird, hollow plot that failed to keep me all-that invested. The whole occult aspect of the film feels forced, trope-ridden and, ironically, empty. I would have preferred a straight up supernatural horror story.
The narrative ends up being such a cross-wired mess that tries to be one step ahead of its audience with confusing, poorly conceived twists that feel incredibly forced. It attempts to combine three arcs into a compelling story, but just ends up being an overthought muddle.
I actually quite liked the performance of James Badge Dale, writing aside, until the last twenty minutes of the film, where he finally folded into utter mediocrity. In addition, his character has a weird obsession with bringing up San Francisco - something that is literally never explained in the slightest.
Marin Ireland portrayed a pretty interesting character with a lot of potential, but did so rather poorly. She just overacted way too often for me to take her seriously. Other supporting performances from Sasha Frolova, Samantha Logan and Ron Canada did leave some sort of impression, though none of them were particularly exceptional.
Overall, I'd say this is a horror that did a lot of the fundamental elements of horror well, but wasted its potential on trying to hop between subgenres with very little grace. The film tried so hard to be smart and mysterious, but only succeeded in being convoluted and nonsensical.
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