the void movie review

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The Void Review

This insane horror mash-up definitely has its gooey charms. Read our review...

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If The Void came out in the 1980s, it might have spawned an entire franchise, spent decades burnishing its credentials as a cult horror gem, and would be the subject any day now of a lovely restored deluxe edition Blu-ray from Scream Factory, Arrow or some other niche home video shingle. As it stands, this being 2017, The Void is still a blast as a horror film and a kind of a throwback to those wild and crazy days of three decades ago. It lacks the sophistication and resonance of the genre’s finer outings of late, but it piles on the atmosphere and gore in bucketfuls.

Aaron Poole stars as a small town cop named Carter whose relatively quiet overnight shift takes a disquieting turn when he discovers a blood-soaked man (Evan Stern) in the middle of a country road (we had seen the man escaping earlier from a sinister house and a cruel murder scene). Carter takes the man to the local emergency room, conveniently staffed by Carter’s ex-wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe), two other nurses and Dr. Powell (Kenneth Welsh of Twin Peaks fame). Things take a bizarre turn, however, when two men burst into the hospital looking to kill the man Carter brought in, while outside the building is suddenly surrounded by frightening figures dressed in white robes.

The Void quickly ramps up the horror quotient from there, piling on well-worn tropes like reanimated corpses, a death cult, a portal to another dimension and Lovecraftian entities in a cinematic soup that plays like a blend of Re-Animator , The Beyond , Halloween 2 and The Gate . Writers/directors Steve Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie, a make-up artist and visual designer respectively who have made shorts and features with the Astron-6 film collective, throw pretty much everything at the wall here and surprisingly make it all stick, letting the thick atmosphere, sober tone and truly gonzo visuals carry the film even while their script doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

We’re never really sure what the cult and the portal and the monsters that start emerging out of bodies in the hospital all have to do with each other, and that is where The Void falls short of its ambitions to be an epic cosmic horror tale. But where the story lapses, the directors — clearly talented and headed for bigger fare — make up for it with swift, clean pacing and jaw-dropping practical gore and creature effects that are refreshingly visceral in these days when even bursts of blood are created via CG. One wishes that the editing was a bit slower in some scenes where it’s a bit hard to tell what is doing what to whom, but that may be due to budgetary limitations as well as directorial taste.

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The Void never really pulls its overarching mythos together into a coherent whole, while at the same time giving our small and overmatched band of refugees too many connection points to not come across as a bit contrived. Nevertheless you still find yourself rooting for them to escape, with Poole giving a warm performance as a rather mild-mannered cop who must rise to a decidedly unprecedented challenge and the rest doing just enough to make you feel for their predicament. It’s also nice to see veterans like Welsh (who grappled with a portal as Windom Earle back in the Twin Peaks days) and ‘70s horror regular Art Hindle ( The Brood , Invasion of the Body Snatchers ) show up.

Kostanski and Gillespie pay homage to those golden years without resorting to cheap copycat tricks; as a result, fans will recognize The Void ’s DNA but still appreciate its modern veneer. Its all-out deployment of so many horror devices may keep it from classic status, but it’s still a fast and furious 90 minutes of mayhem that embraces its genre with relish, respect and style.

The Void is out Friday (April 7) in select cities and through VOD.

3.5 out of 5

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

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As someone who adores horror movies, one of my favorite things to do is search through the libraries of various streaming sites, and pluck out the random gems I’ve never heard of. Some of these end up being mainstream pictures I never got to see while they were out, but a lot of them are straight to DVD/streaming releases or indie-funded projects.It just so happens that during one of these evenings, I came across The Void .

The Canadian horror film was funded via Indiegogo, and saw a limited release in theaters before hitting Netflix. Written and directed by Steven Kostanski and Je remy Gillespie , The Void follows a group of people that try to live through the night fighting back cultists and demons.  By the time the ending credits began rolling, I was left with mixed feelings.

Much of the film reminded me of other work that I enjoy as a horror fan. When it comes to the strengths in The Void , the movie captures some damn fine elements of horror . And When it comes to the parts where the picture falters, things become bland and wasteful.

Who Are You Again?

The movie begins with a young man and woman escaping a house, with two perpetrators behind them. After the woman is killed, the young man is found by a police officer and taken to a nearby hospital. It is at the hospital that we meet the entire cast. We learn that the officer Daniel ( Aaron Poole ) and the nurse Allison ( Kathleen Munroe ) are husband and wife, and beyond that we get a sidebar of numerous other characters.

What kicks things into high gear is when these cultists begin to show up and surround the hospital. In the beginning we are led to believe that they have something to do with the young man that was brought in, but as time goes on, others in the hospital are not who they appear to be. The set up to all of this is pretty interesting, and the cultists look damn creepy. They are dressed in white cloaks, a black triangle printed on their face.

At first, I found myself really invested in the scenario and looking forward to see how characters would react and what would be revealed. The let down to this, though, is that due to the amount of characters involved, no one gets enough time to become fully fleshed out. Eventually, the movie splits into so many underlining stories attempting to portray different ideas, that it becomes difficult to follow anyone’s character arc; it hurts one’s ability to sincerely latch onto anyone and relate in any way to the characters. We learn that there are issues between Daniel and Allison, and then we learn about the story with the two perpetrators from the beginning, and then there’s a story with the hospital’s doctor (and much more).

The cast is provided plenty of witty dialogue, but the picture lacks that connection that allows us to root or care for any individual. When we are first introduced to Daniel and Allison, their distance is more jarring than sad (given that they are still married and struggling through difficulties). It is mostly through Daniel that we get this pushy character that only strives to be rebellious, and it never allows for the couple’s dialogue to go anywhere. We get the idea that something is wrong between the two, but between Daniel’s refusal to have a full on conversation and Allison coming off as emotional as a piece of blank paper, their dialogue is just awkward. Even the movie’s main villain is a bore. When we finally discover who it is and what they want, it all comes through like crazy for the sake of being crazy. They just babble on, becoming another character that we snooze through.

There are some attempts at trying to provide a deep theme of losing children throughout the movie by  Kostanski  and  Gillespie . We learn that this theme is tied to several characters, and while it shows potential at times in providing some substance to the story, it never becomes more than just a talking point. The cast in The Void make up for a big chunk of why the film isn’t perfect. That being said, however, there is still plenty of room for what works.

Inspirations, Chills, And Effects

Veteran horror lovers will immediately pick up on all the movies that The Void wears on its sleeve. The premise of being held up in the hospital by the cultists feels like Assault On Precinct 13 , and the leader of the cult and their end goal feels similar to the bad guy in Event Horizon . The film even tosses in some monsters, presenting beings that feel like they came out of The Thing .

Some moviegoers have pointed out that The Void tries too much to be these other movies than focusing on creating its own identity. While the influences are glaring, it’s by blending so many ideas that  The Void is able to present its own vibe. What helps to make the movie enjoyable (even if you don’t care for the characters) is that the atmosphere itself is terrific. Later on in the picture, we are shown this other world that the cultists worship, and it looks damn creepy. The chills are similar to that of Hellraiser , making for a visual awe.

The actual world isn’t described in all that much detail, which is a bummer, but its dark and dank aura is enough to create a sense of misery. The Void uses well-rounded lighting to present somber emotions and shades of dread. From this world comes its creatures, and one of the film’s most magnificent strengths.  Kostanski ‘s ’80s-inspired vision was carried out with the help of costume designer, Tisha Myles  and special effects coordinator, Stefano Beninati . The special effects on these beings are absolutely incredible; the monsters look authentically terrifying and gross, and are impressive to watch as they move.

When it comes to the picture depicting action with these monsters, it never shies away. There’s no strobing lights or shaky cam to give the illusion of violence, but instead just steady clear shots depicting the chaos. One scene in particular involving a creature in the hospital attacking a cop shows everything with no hesitation, and makes for a special effects treat.

Cinematographer,  Samy Inayeh deserves a round of applause for the terrific energy that The Void breathes. Kostanski  and  Gillespie ‘s direction for the creature effects is outstanding, and shows incredible talent that provides the movie one of its greatest strengths. All of this allows for one to be interested in what’s going on without having a full understanding of the story; despite its plot shortcomings, The Void is a fun work to watch.

A Gateway To Something More

While The Void suffers from underdeveloped characters, it still manages to show promise. The story may appear a little flat, but is still able to lure viewers in due to its atmosphere and creepiness. The film clearly knows what it is doing in the visuals department, as it portrays some of the sickest and most interesting visual effects I’ve seen in sometime.

The Void  has the ideas it wants to pursue, but can’t make them fully blossom. Regardless, in the end, it always feels good to see filmmakers succeed in creating the work they wanted. Through  Kostanski  and  Gillespie ‘s inspirations and own personal vision, they have crafted a work that serves as a decent blueprint for where to take their craft next.

Did you see The Void ? Did the effects remind you of any great horror films of the 1980s?

The Void was released on April 7th, 2017 in the U.S.

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Michael Pementel is a Columbia College Chicago graduate of the Creative Writing Program. With an immense love for pop and geek culture, he covers everything from film, video games, anime, and music. From editorials analyzing a given work, to digging into how our entertainment impacts us, he uses his writing to connect people with art. When he isn't writing, you can find him at the local movie theater with his fiancé, playing video games, or playing some sort of collectible trading card game. You can find more of his work here, as well as: FilmDaddy and New Noise Magazine.

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Film Review: ‘The Void’

There's no lack of emergencies — medical, supernatural, and otherwise — at a rural hospital in this horror opus.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

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Writer-directors Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski started out in Winnipeg film collective Astron-6, whose first features “Manborg” and “Father’s Day” were subversively funny low-budget genre send-ups of dystopian-future action cheese and bad-taste gore horror, respectively. There’s nothing spoofy about their latest, however. “The Void” plays its tale of one hectic night’s bloody peril at a rural hospital relatively straight, which is not to say there’s anything straightforward about the story these Canadians have cooked up. Indeed, after a promising start, this enterprising but overstuffed endeavor drifts increasingly into a muddled sci-fi mystical horror hybrid that only gets more confusing as it grows more thematically ambitious.

At least its failings aren’t formulaic ones — or perhaps they’re the fault of jamming in more fantastic-cinema formula than one modestly scaled film can support. “The Void,” which Screen Media opens on thirty-odd U.S. screens April 7 after a successful festival-circuit run, is a bit of a mess. But in an era when stab-by-numbers remakes and sequels dominate big-screen horror, this resourceful, polished indie merits some admiration simply for trying to do more than it can pull off — not to mention more than most undiscriminating horror fans ask for these days.

The opening finds a couple terrified youths fleeing an isolated house, pursued by two men. The girl never makes it past the lawn, as the latter duo dole her out a nasty, fiery death. The wounded boy manages to escape into the surrounding forest. He’s soon found by the side of the road by local cop Dan Carter (Aaron Poole), who at first assumes James (Evan Stern) is just some drunk kid, then realizes he requires serious medical attention.

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Unfortunately, nearest facility March County Hospital is barely open, with just a skeleton crew packing things up for a move to a new building in the wake of a damaging fire. In addition to senior staffer Dr. Powell (Kenneth Walsh), there’s a couple nurses (including Kathleen Munroe as the wife Dan has been separated from since their child died), a hapless intern (Ellen Wong’s Kim), and very few patients, including a nearly-due pregnant woman (Grace Munro).

It doesn’t take long after Dan and James’ arrival for all hell to break loose. Initial stages include violent psychotic episodes and creature mutations, as well as the re-surfacing of the initial homicidal duo (Daniel Fathers, Mik Byskov), who it turns out are actually trying to stop further outbreaks of psychosis, mutation, and who knows what else. With so many terrors within, the logical recourse would be to get as far as way as possible. Alas, the hospital is now surrounded by silent figures clad in what looks like a compromise between KKK robes and hazmat suits. They’re a presence quite ominous enough to dissuade the protagonists’ thoughts of escape, even before they all pull out giant kitchen knives.

Things escalate so quickly and effectively in this early progress that, for at least its first half hour, “The Void” is not only exciting, but has the excitement of a movie whose next moves are anyone’s guess. Too bad that the direction it eventually heads is farther and farther into the imaginative ozone, even as characters wade deeper into the hospital’s bowels. There they discover Dr. Powell has been “defying God,” as well as death and nature, via nightmarish “experiments” that have opened a portal into another dimension.

These sequences retain some atmospheric expertise, as well as providing a few nice climactic cosmic-psychedelic effects. But as it lurches into more Lovecraftian territory, the screenplay becomes an increasingly muddled mix of sci-fi mystical horror whose too many underdeveloped ideas reduce one another’s potency. Perhaps Kostanski and Gillespie got carried away piling on ways to showcase their separate additional skill sets — which include prosthetic makeup and digital FX design, art direction, even music composing. Whatever the reason, somewhere they lost track of the basic cogency required to keep suspense taut and the audience reasonably oriented.

While conceptual clutter has a diminishing effect on the whole, “The Void” is still comprised of a lot of good parts — including a handsome overall look (the nocturnal palate of Samy Inayeh’s widescreen framing vaguely recalls classic John Carpenter), committed performances, sharp editing by Cam McLachlin, and an original soundtrack that’s consistent in its eeriness despite being credited to five separate composing individuals and groups.

Reviewed online, San Francisco, March 24, 2017. Running time: 90 MIN.

• Production: (Canada) A Screen Media Films release of a Cave Painting Pictures, JoBro Productions presentation, in association with 120dB Films, XYZ Films. Producers: Casey Walker, Jonathan Bronfman. Executive producers: Todd Brown, David Watson, Jeremy Platt, Stephan Hayes, Peter Graham, Ross M. Dinerstein, James Norrie, Mic Forsey, Lon Molnar, Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski. Co-producers: Jenifer Pun, Peter Kuplowsky, Racheal Forbes, Colin Geddes, Katarina Gligorijevic, Rosalie Chilelli.
• Crew: Directors, writers: Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski. Camera (color, widescreen, HD): Samy Inayeh. Editor: Cam McLauchlin. Music: Blitz//Berlin, Menalon, Brian Wiacek, Jeremy Gillespie, Lustmord.
• With: Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Daniel Fathers, Kathleen Munroe, Ellen Wong, Mik Byskov, Art Hindle, Stephanie Belding, James Millington, Evan Stern, Grace Munro, Matt Kennedy, Trish Rainone.

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‘The Void’ Is One Gigantic ’80s B-Movie Reference

The Canadian horror film is a loving tribute to a specific kind of gore

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There’s a scene in the new low-budget Canadian horror movie The Void where two characters approach an ominous closed door in a dingy basement. As one moves impulsively to open it, the other proceeds with caution. "I appreciate your enthusiasm," he says to his comrade, "but we need to think this through." The Void doesn’t follow this advice. The charm of Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie’s film is that it’s all enthusiasm and it’s no caution. It takes as many moist, gooey clichés as it can and hurls them against the wall to see what sticks. The resulting splatter is a bloody mess, which, if not a mass-audience spectacle, is exactly what these filmmakers were going for in the first place.

Kostanski and Gillespie are charter members of the Winnipeg-based filmmaking group Astron-6, which takes its name from a throwaway line in The Lord of the Rings and its M.O. from a post–Quentin Tarantino moment in which genre cinema has become an extended game of spot-the-old-movie-reference. In recent years, Canadian directors have held their own in this area, with worthy efforts like Jason Eisener’s Hobo With a Shotgun (whose title is not a metaphor) and Panos Cosmatos’s amazing, synth-driven Beyond the Black Rainbow . Kostanski’s micro-budget 2011 sci-fi pastiche Manborg was embraced on the late-night specialty festival circuit not in spite of but because of its redolent cheesiness. A blob of postapocalyptic nonsense starring the Astron-6 guys in backyard AV-club project mode, the film cost $1,000 and left one wondering where the other $999 went. It was followed by the nominally more polished Father’s Day (an absurdly over-cranked ’80s slasher parody) and The Editor , which lovingly if unconvincingly evoked Dario Argento’s deep-red Italian giallo s.

The Void represents a major step up for Astron-6, in terms of both production value and conceptual ambition. It’s got genuine crowd-pleasing potential, even if it will reach its audience mostly through VOD. Grading on a Canadian B-movie curve, it’s closer in look and feel to the sleek, polished Beyond the Black Rainbow than the collective’s other, jokier efforts. At its worst, it’s an attempt to conjure up the sort of earnest, unreconstructed horror movie that they don’t make anymore, but definitely did back in the days of dusty VHS cassettes. At its best, it evokes the repulsive body-horror imagery of David Cronenberg’s early works, including The Brood .

The presence of that film’s star, Art Hindle — a veteran of Canadian exploitation movies who also appeared in Black Christmas and Porky’s , and more recently infamous apple juice magnate turned vanity production mogul Frank D’Angelo’s Sicilian Vampire — in The Void’s ensemble cast is the kind of nod that’s there to delight hardcore fans without distracting the uninitiated. The film’s nominal lead is Aaron Poole, who plays a rural cop trying to process some slightly unusual occurrences, like a wounded teenager lying bleeding by the side of the road, before turning his attention to more pressing concerns. These include a flash mob of masked, knife-wielding cultists congregated outside the local hospital, and the much Stranger Things going down inside among the locked-in doctors and patients, including an act of amateur cranial surgery that serves as the first of several extremely well-engineered shock moments. Poole’s attempt to rally the troops against these threats is what passes for a plot; the answer to what’s causing the weirdness lies, inevitably, in the hospital’s basement.

What’s most enjoyable about The Void is its aversion to drag: It gets going quickly and keeps finding ways to reroute things beyond even savvy viewers’ expectations. ("That escalated quickly!" I said to myself somewhere around the 15-minute mark.) The film’s effectiveness is largely a matter of inventive staging, along with a slew of analog monsters that honor the chunky, tactile handiwork of ’80s creature-effects stalwarts like Rick Baker and Rob Bottin (particularly the latter’s designs for The Thing ) and superb production design by concept artist Henry Fong, whose résumé includes the exponentially more expensive X-Men: Apocalypse and Suicide Squad. There’s real filmmaking smarts in the way that The Void ’s aesthetic mutates from a drab, John Carpenterish small-town realism into grandly stylized psychedelia over 90 minutes. There’s also some admirable restraint, as when a particularly grisly murder is played out through a pane of glass in shadowy silhouette. And the actors are all solid, including the veteran Alberta-cured ham Kenneth Welsh, whose previous villainous role as Windom Earle on Twin Peaks (sadly not slated to be resurrected in the show’s upcoming third season) hints that there’s something going on underneath his saintly-doctor facade.

But The Void stumbles in trying to create emotional context for the action. When Carpenter made his version of The Thing , he knew better than to give any of his characters a tragic backstory, which had the effect of making them all seem equally expendable; Cronenberg didn’t manage to mix real feelings into the gore until he made The Fly. Kostanski and Gillespie are trying to have things both ways, rampaging through a series of set pieces that reduce their performers to pulled pork and then trying to work in themes of loss and survivor guilt by giving their villain an intensely personal motivation.

This attempt at gravitas is a mistake. It clashes with the essential playfulness of the filmmaking, and shows how far the Astron-6 guys have to go before they can truly challenge the classics. Hindle’s cameo is a total throwaway, but it brings to mind his appearance in Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers , which is horrifying in direct proportion to how much we care about its characters: Something is lost each time one of them gets Xeroxed by extraterrestrial pods. Beneath its layers of latex FX, The Void means to be a movie about the dangers of not letting go of our loved ones after they’ve gone. But its creators are so happy to exhume the past that it’s hard to take its point too seriously.

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The Void review – an effects-driven gore-fest

T his gleefully amateurish satanic gore-fest is the kind of film you might get if you gave a 15-year-old horror fan access to a strobe light, some white bed sheets and a job lot of exploding prosthetic heads. The plot is of negligible importance in a movie that feels more like a CV for an effects artist than a coherent story. In the basement of a burned-out hospital, grotesque cadavers hang like flesh stalactites, and a monster that looks like the leftovers from a liposuction operation picks off the cast. Fortunately a chatty evil genius is on hand to explain his nefarious plan at length (while simultaneously flaying off his own skin, for some reason).

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The void – movie review: a supremely confident blend of cosmic horror and human carnage.

30 March, 2017 — by Christopher Ratcliff — 0

To bastardise a fairly obvious Friedrich Nietzsche quote, “If you gaze long enough into the void, the void will throw back at you a truly satisfying blend of Lovecraftian terror and body horror, that manages to both unsettle and entertain.” Or something, I don’t know, I was shit at philosophy. I am good at watching horror movies though, and I loved this one.

The Void takes place in a small, local hospital during the course of one night. There’s a skeleton staff, including Allison whose estranged police officer husband Daniel has recently brought in an injured young man on the run from a pair of murderous strangers. Things take a turn for the extreme when a fellow nurse slices off her own face and stabs a patient in the head. Meanwhile the hospital is surrounded by an army of mysterious cloaked figures, brandishing ceremonial knives with black triangles emblazoned on their faces. And this is only the very beginning of how messed up things get. There are also foul-looking tentacled humanoid monsters, skinless reanimated corpses, a demon pregnancy and a cosmic monolith.

On paper it sounds like a gonzo-mix of unworkable elements, but the genius of The Void is how it all just makes total thematic sense in context. And just how bloody wonderful it all is.

The Void is at once familiar, yet unlike anything you’ve seen before. The nods to other horror movies and books are plentiful, but they never feel derivative. It’s a supremely confident blending of cosmic horror and human carnage, that forces you to question all sorts of terrifying matters beyond your tiny existence, and yet ultimately makes you glad of the human connections you’ve made.

Writer and director team Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie are part of the Astron-6 collective, whose work includes the tongue-in-cheek retro horrors The Editor and Manborg, however with The Void, Kostanski and Gillespie aren’t dicking around. This is the real deal.

The creature effects are clearly a labour of love for Kostanski and Gillespie, they pass The Thing test of being so grotesque they’re hard to look at, but also so impressive you have to admire the craftsmanship. And they really are disgusting. You’ll take the Blair-Thing  over what The Void presents in its gruelling finalé any day. Later when our heroes venture further down into the hospital basement, they’re met with an array of abominations that far outstrip Hellraiser’s chattering cenobites or the morgue cadavers in Re-Animator .

As well as The Thing, it borrows a little of the foreboding atmosphere of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, but The Void’s ultimate influence is found in the pages of H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulu haunted nightmares. The many cuts to an otherworldly realm where a giant triangle hovers through the swirling chaos are absolutely chilling. The Void avoids jump scares, but instead suffuses dread into every last corner of its triangular motif.

The fact that Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie manage to balance so many disparate elements and moving parts to make a coherent, unified whole is a hell of an achievement. This is far from a ‘let’s hold up in a building and fight the scary guys outside’ movie. Threats are everywhere, but The Void is constructed masterfully to make the most of all its various horrors. As exemplified in an incredibly tense scene involving a four-way stand-off involving a pregnant hostage, a shapeless monster, the police, some armed strangers, and the hooded figures outside. An early line of dialogue, “Statistically you’re more likely to die in a hospital than anywhere else” hangs over the movie like a portent.

Dialogue moves gracefully between humour and general “what the fuckery” via more transcendental matters. And at times The Void is surprisingly very touching. At the heart of the story are parents who have lost their children, and after all the unrelenting horror there’s a message that although the abyss is terrifying, perhaps it’s a little less terrifying when you’re facing it with someone. It’s a rare horror that manages to find hope in utter oblivion, but The Void manages it. I smiled gleefully throughout the whole thing.  5/5

Please note, this review was originally published last year as part of our London Film Festival coverage.

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Monday, April 3, 2017

'the void' (2016) movie review.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, enter the void and the inhuman condition.

“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear … I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. ” — Roger Ebert

Inaccessible as mortality itself and as jolting as a bullet to the back, Gaspar Noé ’s “Enter the Void,” which made its Cannes debut ten years ago this month, is a science fiction movie, but it isn’t worried about what exists outside our world. It isn’t concerned with aliens or spaceships. It’s about what we’re all obsessed with—pretending to live, refusing to die, and latching onto any ersatz empathy just for the sake of hope. It isn’t an optimistic film in its depiction of the afterlife, but that’s entirely the point—and that’s what makes it sort of beautiful.

Writer/director Gaspar Noé has been a staple of the New French Extremity movement since the turn of the millennium. His debut feature, “I Stand Alone” (1998), was a cauldron of rage centered on a man so seething the audience had to strain to see his humanity. “ Irreversible ” (2002) existed in the same narrative universe but was thematically adjacent more than anything else. They were neck-deep in social nihilism, drowning in the worst of human nature. But while they were each an hour-and-a-half of vitriol, “Enter the Void” acts as the answer to that: a nearly three-hour dissociation of living, dying, and repeating, all from an atheistic view.

Noé has regularly disagreed with the concept of a higher power and life after death . This isn’t too surprising given how antitheist his films are, and while “Enter the Void” is much more spiritual than his other films, it’s also much more accepting of death. That may sound depressing in theory, but Noé is so comfortable in his beliefs that there’s little room for depression. Here, death is not sad. It’s nothing to fear, or hate, or cry about. It simply is.

“Death is an extraordinary experience,” Noé told the Irish Times . “I believe that. No one can really tell you what it is like because once you’ve experienced death, you are done. But it only happens just once in your life. By its nature it is extraordinary. If you are suffering or in pain, death is the best thing that can happen. I’m annoyed by a culture in which death is always considered something bad.”

“Enter the Void” revels in death right away by treating it like a breath of fresh air in a world hogtied by plastic. First, the film dives into its opening credits, an assault of flashing words and staccato techno music. It’s hypnotic, sure, but it also feels like a game of chicken between the viewer and a case of epilepsy. Just as we adjust to the anarchy, it dies. Cut to black.

Now we’re in a first-person point of view. We are Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), an American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo. We talk with our sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) on a balcony overlooking a world of neon and, after she leaves, smoke some DMT. Then a phone call interrupts the trip: it’s Victor ( Olly Alexander ), an acquaintance asking for some more drugs. But he can’t pick them up, so we need to bring them to him.

We oblige just as there’s a knock on the door—is it the police? No, it’s just Alex (Cyril Roy), a friend who’s lent us his copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. We head over to Victor and discuss the afterlife and reincarnation, and despite being in one of the most populous cities in the world, it never feels like we’re in more than a bubble. We’re itching to pop out of it.

We part ways with Alex and eventually find Victor in a bar. He’s crying. “I’m so sorry,” he says—and then the police swarm in. We run into the bathroom, try to flush the drugs, and pop!—the police shoot us through the door. We keel over. We die. Slowly, oh so slowly. And as we finally leave our body, we take the perspective of our spirit as it floats around the city, reliving our past memories and seeing our death’s aftermath. The first-person perspective becomes third person when replaying memories, and an over-the-shoulder framing motif carries an uncanny degree of separation from our own body. It’s a piggyback ride with our eyes on our back, right by the angel wings that never come to be.

Over the course of the journey, we remember that Linda’s and our parents died in a car crash while we were small kids. Foster care put her in a different home and, in accordance with a childhood pact we made to never leave each other, we started selling drugs to help Linda to move to Tokyo. But we got more and more into drugs. We needed more and more until more was never enough. Just maybe if we can find a second life, we can get just that: more.

Noé may find death to be happy if anything, but that’s something Oscar can’t bring himself to believe. His fatal flaw is what keeps him from passing on.

Truthfully, “Enter the Void”’s climax is Oscar’s death, only 25 minutes into the 161-minute film. It would be the inciting incident in most films, but here it caps off the part that’s grounded to reality. The film then dives into science fiction and becomes unstuck in time for its remaining 136 minutes, and as our protagonist searches for reincarnation, Noé approaches his arc with the detachment often seen in the sci-fi work of Tarkovsky and Kubrick. The idea of living, dying, and repeating until breaking the cycle is fundamentally spiritual (and specifically Buddhist), but it’s also a genre staple. From “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” to “Solaris” to “ Under the Skin ,” the concept is divorced from theism. It’s a form of atheistic spiritualism that Noé treats as sci-fi, like a drug-fueled melodrama as told by "2001"’s star child. 

In a September 2010 interview with Den of Geek , Noé said that he partly based the film’s premise on a theory that our brains contain limited amounts of DMT, which are unleashed during death. This was later echoed in a September 2018 article from the BBC that documented the reported similarities between DMT trips and near-death experiences. Combined with the languid pacing and psychedelic aesthetics, “Enter the Void”’s internalized sense of humanity feels just as elusive as the unknown encounters of “2001” or the personified dreams of “Solaris.”

As we do stumble out of the film, it ends with a rebirth. Could it be Oscar’s eventual reincarnation or could it just be a stoner’s dream that he had while dying? Was he trying to assign some sort of meaning to his life or was it actually there? If there was no latent purpose, is it better or worse for his life to reset? What if there is a latent purpose? Would the real damnation be an end to all emotions and the end of all life?

Whether Oscar’s life had meaning doesn’t matter because he couldn’t give himself to the possibility of it not. In the world of “Enter the Void,” it’s as good to cease to exist than it is to live and suffer.

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Review: Elisabeth Moss stars as a spy gone rogue in FX’s thriller ‘The Veil’

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Elisabeth Moss has acted in more projects than you can remember for more years than you might guess, but it was “Mad Men” in 2007 that made her the reason to watch a show — an impression cemented by “ Top of the Lake” and taken for granted by the time of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

She’s a fierce presence; even when playing powerlessness, she radiates intensity. In “The Veil,” created by Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”) and premiering Tuesday on Hulu, the camera makes a habit of looking straight at her face, submitting you to her penetrating gaze.

Moss plays MI6 agent Imogen Salter, which we understand immediately is just her latest nom d’espionnage . (The actor’s father was British, so she comes by the accent half honestly.) She turns up incognito at a snowy U.N. refugee camp at the Syrian-Turkish border, where a young woman, Adilah El Idrissi (Yumna Marwan), has been taken into protective custody after having nearly been lynched by a mob that believes her to be Sabaine al Kubaisi, an upper-level Islamic State commander, “the most wanted woman in the world.”

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Imogen has come to the camp to find out what Adilah, or Sabaine, might know about a rumored big terrorist attack on a Western target, and spirits her away. Owing in no small part to Marwan’s deep soulfulness, our sympathy at first runs to Adilah, a lone, broken figure hoping only to get back to her 10-year-old daughter in Paris.

She at least seems to be telling the truth, whereas Imogen, who represents powerful government institutions, professionally lies all the time — though we’re kept uncertain just how much to believe what either says. “Even though we’re lying to each other, I feel like I’ve been more honest with her than most people,” Imogen will tell French agent Malik Amar (Dali Benssalah), her contact and more-or-less boyfriend, in regard to Adilah.

Imogen can seem a little mad; she has a habit of smiling at odd times, making it difficult to know exactly what’s going on in there. We can infer from her smoking and drinking that she’s an unsettled sort of person, and we’re fed morsels of an origin story to suggest unresolved trauma, which seems engineered to parallel Adilah‘s but will obviously be assembled further down the line.

In the end — near the beginning, actually — Imogen will go rogue, setting herself against her superiors and protecting (and interrogating) Adilah as they travel from Syria to Istanbul to Paris and England, their way obstructed by terrorist proxies and warring intelligence agencies.

It’s a road movie, basically, one of those in which strangers thrown together become less strange to one another. As a spy story, it’s a decent example of its kind, but as a dramatic two-hander, fueled by subtle performances from Moss and Marwan, it’s pretty terrific.

Josh Charles plays CIA agent Max Peterson, a caricature of U.S. bluster, impatience, self-approval and Francophobia, sent to Paris to hijack the investigation from French intelligence. (Imogen is on loan to them, being the absolute best at what she does; British intelligence doesn’t enter the picture.)

Described by Malik’s superior, Magritte (the august Thibault de Montalembert, who recently provided similar service in “Franklin”), as “the most American American America has ever produced,” Max isn’t out of the airport before he’s actually tussling with Malik. Their butting-stags competitive relationship is as close to comic relief as “The Veil” will come.

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Terrorism, as depicted onscreen, is a tired and tricky theme, subject to cultural stereotype. Accordingly, Knight has left the composition of his malefactors — not even ISIS (that is, Islamic State) but “a breakaway ISIS cell,” a marginal marginal group — a little vague, and painted sides in a variety of ethnicities. (One notes that both Adilah and Malik are French Algerian.) But terrorism is a device here, not a subject.

Though its premise makes it unavoidably political, “The Veil” is only, one might say, incidentally so, no more interested in actual geopolitics or ideology than “Ronin,” which the Paris locations bring to mind, or “The 39 Steps.” This strikes me as its strength; in terms of storytelling, the death of hundreds, thousands, millions or billions is merely a tool, a sensational, meaningless abstraction — as it can be in life, sadly. We’ve seen the world or significant portions thereof destroyed onscreen so often that apocalypse has become an empty cliche, nothing more than a vehicle for expensive effects and cheap thrills. But the tearing of a single friendship can break your heart.

If it’s not always clear in the moment who is shooting at whom or why, whenever the script ignites a fight or a gunfight or a chase or an escape, there’s no question whom to root for — both Imogen and Adilah. Asked to choose between them, one simply suspends judgment, hoping, as with any troubled couple, that things will work out well. Though all six episodes were sent to reviewers, only the first four were allowed to be reviewed, so you will have to see and decide for yourself.

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“i do credit robert kirkman”: how the walking dead helped launch another massive horror hit (by accident).

The Walking Dead was a huge hit until the very end. But the unexpected final issue inadvertently helped a new horror franchise find success.

• Something is Killing the Children thrived post-Walking Dead, attracting horror fans looking for a new series.
• James Tynion IV credits The Walking Dead's end for helping his series succeed with a loyal horror audience.
• Tynion's series captured The Walking Dead's audience and he credits Robert Kirkman for inadvertently helping him.

If it weren't for The Walking Dead , horror fans one of the most popular recent horror series would never have become the sensation it is today. At a recent panel, Something is Killing the Children architect James Tynion IV revealed just how grateful he is to The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman for helping Tynion's series become a success.

At 2024 Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, James Tynion IV spoke at the panel, "The Worlds of James Tynion IV: A Decade at BOOM! Studios". During the panel, Tynion reflected on how big the Something is Killing the Children franchise has grown as it hits its milestone fifth anniversary.

James Tynion IV: “I do credit Robert Kirkman in an indirect way because he surprisingly ended The Walking Dead in the summer of 2019 […] The issue was there weren’t a lot of horror comics on the stands, right? So retailers all over the country had a bunch of readers that liked reading a horror book every single month and they no longer had a new book. The next horror number one coming out was Something is Killing the Children #1 and it was up to us to actually capture that readership, but I think we did. So I do, I do thank Rob.”

Tynion admitted that while he didn't count on his story's success, he does, in part, credit Robert Kirkman's sudden decision to end The Walking Dead . According to Tynion, he believes horror fans gravitated to his book since its first issue came out just a few months after The Walking Dead #139 .

Something is Killing the Children Filled the Void Left by The Walking Dead

In the past few years, Something is Killing the Children has become one of the fastest-growing horror franchises in comic books. In addition to Erica Slaughter's journey, fans have seen more of the 'Slaughterverse' the spin-off series House of Slaughter and one-shots like Book of Slaughter and Book of Butcher . But long before the Slaughterverse took the horror comic world by storm, The Walking Dead reigned supreme. Over a decade and a half, The Walking Dead grew from an ongoing series to one of the most successful horror franchises composed of video games, novels, and a groundbreaking television show.

It's hard to say if Tynion is correct about his assumption, but The Walking Dead did end right before Something is Killing the Children #1 debuted. It's understandable that horror fans would have sought a new series to get into and looked for an easily accessible book, especially from a creator like Tynion who'd already made a name for himself working on titles like Batman and The Woods . At the very least, Tynion believes that The Walking Dead's sudden ending was a boon to his series , and he's more than willing to credit Kirkman's choice to end his series.

James Tynion IV is Grateful For How Things Worked Out with The Walking Dead

Of course, Tynion isn't saying his series only succeeded because The Walking Dead ended right before his series' debut. It just happened to work out that an incredibly popular book's audience was left in a lurch, and Something is Killing the Children just happened to be the next book that any horror fan could easily get into. Given Tynion's huge presence in the comic book world, it's likely his book would have been a success regardless. But he's willing to show appreciation to The Walking Dead for the boost James Tynion IV believes it gave his horror series.

A Void Without A Face

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Enter the Void

Where to watch.

Rent Enter the Void on Prime Video, or buy it on Prime Video.

What to Know

Grimy and psychedelic, Enter the Void ushers audiences through an out-of-body experience with the eye for extremity and technical wizardry that Gaspar Noé fans have come to expect.

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'Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire' Season 2 Review: A Gloriously Tangled and Compelling Part Two

Season 2 premieres May 12 on AMC and AMC+.

The Big Picture

• Season 2 of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire continues where Season 1 left off, exploring tangled relationships and unforeseen consequences.
• The cast is even more comfortable in their roles, with Jacob Anderson especially shining as Louis, while the story becomes even more intricate.
• The second season expands the greater Immortal Universe, diving deeper into complex dynamics and potential connections.

When Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire first premiered in 2021, it was met with guarded anticipation. Over the years, there have only been a handful of attempts to adapt the late author's most popular series, The Vampire Chronicles , to ultimately mixed results. Subsequent adaptation plans for the vampire saga never even made it out of development hell . But AMC's securing of the rights to Rice's beloved novels was a promising step forward, one that was poised to breathe new life into these immortal creatures via not just a standalone series, but a potential universe. Since Interview with the Vampire was first announced, there's been a Mayfair Witches show as well as plans to develop an upcoming spin-off based on the mysterious organization known as the Talamasca — and, presumably, even more to come beyond those. But when going back to where it all began, the biggest question became whether Interview with the Vampire 's latest chapter could replicate Season 1's smash-hit success . Good news for longtime fans and newcomers alike: after screening the first six episodes of Season 2 provided for review, the answer is a resounding yes, and then some.

Interview with the Vampire

Based on Anne Rice's iconic novel, follow Louis de Pointe's epic story of love, blood and the perils of immortality, as told to the journalist Daniel Molloy.

What Is 'Interview with the Vampire' Season 2 About?

Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire essentially picks up where the first installment of the story left off — in fact, the show itself explicitly labels the season as a "Part Two," almost as a way to signal to viewers that this is more of a continuation of the previous narrative. After a particularly bloody plot to kill their sire, Lestat de Lioncourt ( Sam Reid ), seemingly results in his death in 1940, vampires Louis de Pointe du Lac ( Jacob Anderson ) and Claudia ( Delainey Hayles , taking over for Bailey Bass from Season 1 ) flee to Europe with the hope of finding others like themselves . They ultimately culminate their journey in Paris, where their conspicuous nighttime activities earn the attention of the Théâtre des Vampires, a local coven headed by the vampire Armand ( Assad Zaman ) . Although Louis and Armand choose to pursue a romance, much to Claudia's visible chagrin, it is a relationship that will have unforeseen consequences for the entire group. Amidst it all, Louis is haunted by Lestat's memory but does his best to bury their lingering connection — especially once he discovers that Lestat was the one who founded the Théâtre des Vampires in the first place, and that he and Armand have their own thorny history.

Meanwhile, in 2022, with "Rashid's" true identity now unveiled, the titular interview continues with Armand as a new third party , as veteran reporter Daniel Molloy ( Eric Bogosian ) now attempts to sift through lies and obfuscations in order to root out the truth. With Louis' memory not as reliable as the vampire had believed it to be, and Armand now present in their conversations, Daniel is forced to balance on an even more dangerous tightrope in speaking with two powerful creatures whose temperaments could turn in an instant. What makes his predicament even more convoluted is that Daniel seems to be remembering bits and pieces from his previous interview with Louis, and as the details that were previously blurred for many years finally make their way to the surface, the revelations that arise could have destructive consequences for current relationships.

'Interview with the Vampire's Cast Is Firmly Settled in Their Roles in Season 2

With every first season comes expected growing pains, but Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire illustrates that this cast has never been more comfortable inhabiting their respective characters. Hayles might have the heaviest lifting to do in assuming the role of Claudia from another actress, and while her version of the character feels inherently different from Bass's incarnation, she brings a more mature interpretation that's very much needed for Claudia at this stage of the story. As a vampire who was turned at a young age, Claudia is perpetually trapped in a pre-pubescent body while possessing the evolved mind of an adult woman, and Hayles' layered portrayal feels perfectly in line with that dichotomy, especially in her more combative scenes with Anderson. As the version of Lestat who perpetually haunts Louis in Season 2, Reid also gets to inhabit facets of the character we've never really seen before, which allows the actor to lean full-tilt into exaggerated facial expressions, over-the-top theatrics, and impassioned declarations.

Although "Rashid" was only an intermittent shadow in the first season, Zaman is given full rein to explore the breadth and depth of his character this time around. Like Anderson, he has to portray both the past and the present versions of Armand, and as Season 2 slowly discloses, time has become an essential teacher for the ancient vampire, not just in his somewhat codependent relationship with Louis, but also through the couple's shared willingness to bury the pain of mutually inflicted wounds . When 2022's interview resumes , it's unclear whether Armand is sticking around to offer a different perspective on the story or correct Louis' version of events, but what becomes increasingly obvious is that there are some details the two are not in unison on, and the subsequent rising tension between the longtime paramours makes for some of the best moments of the season. Comparatively, Louis and Armand might seem more in sync in the past, but even then there are signs that their relationship will have more than one obstacle in its path — chief among them the Théâtre's lead performer, Santiago, played by the deliciously enthralling Ben Daniels .

As Daniel Molloy, the journalist who begins to find himself in over his head with the present-day interview, Bogosian gives off the impression of a man forced to tread water alongside circling sharks. Now that Louis has essentially been outed as an unreliable narrator — though not necessarily through any fault of his own — Daniel has an even more involved role to play in trying to get to the root of the story while being met with denial and resistance at almost every turn. Yet, even if Louis initially presents himself as a more hostile witness at first, one has the sense that he still wants to unlock the inner recesses of his own mind — whether Armand tacitly gives his permission or not. Louis and Daniel's dynamic has been steadily moving away from that of interviewer and subject in favor of something that feels much closer to confidant and confessor, which wouldn't be possible without the actors' continually deepening rapport on-screen.

If there's anyone to whom Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire ultimately belongs, however, it's Anderson. First and foremost, the series reminds us that this is Louis' story, and, as a consequence, Anderson is featured in almost every scene. That command, however, doesn't become cloying; it only reminds us that Louis is one of the most tragic characters in the narrative , a vampire searching for meaning and community while navigating a strong sense of self-loathing and contempt for his very nature. It could be argued that Louis reaches even lower lows this season, but it's a testament to Anderson's phenomenal work that that descent is rendered both heartbreaking and poignant as it plays out through several different timelines.

'Interview with the Vampire' Season 2 Tells an Even More Intricate Story

Interview with the Vampire has always succeeded with its exploration of complicated dynamics, and Season 2 continues in the same vein. Zaman's Armand becoming a larger presence in the story causes a ripple effect on many different storylines, confirming that all the main characters have been more entwined over the years than any of us might have suspected. Even though Armand and Louis are a power couple tethered by past tragedies, and Louis continues to be tortured by Lestat's ghost, Season 2 allows for the exploration of more than one attachment within the group — and, surprising absolutely no one, these vampires are exceptionally messy when it comes to relationship drama, especially when they've had centuries to brood about their feelings. Meanwhile, Daniel somehow fits into the story's biggest triangle more unexpectedly, turning it into more of a square through connections that transcend a merely visceral hunger for blood .

Intimate dynamics aside, Season 2 seems poised to expand the world of the series on an even bigger level. Daniel might be urgently focused on nailing this interview (so he can later write a book that will automatically be catapulted to the top of the bestseller list), but he's not the only one paying attention to what Louis and Armand have been up to all these years. While vampires have remained a secret from the greater population, that doesn't mean they've been able to exist completely unnoticed. The corresponding reveals that emerge throughout the show's second installment aren't just engaging to follow along with; they're an exciting way to build out AMC's self-described Immortal Universe even further into the planned franchise that was envisioned for these books from the beginning. Yet these intriguing hints don't detract or take away from the tangled, intricate story at the heart of Season 2, which continues to prove that Interview with the Vampire is still one of the best TV shows out there.

Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire continues to weave an intricate, tangled story in Season 2.

• Now that Armand's identity has been revealed, Assad Zaman explores even more facets of the ancient vampire to captivating effect.
• Delainey Hayles brings a welcome and more mature energy to her version of Claudia.
• Season 2 proves that Jacob Anderson is the star of Interview with the Vampire.
• Interview with the Vampire Season 2 excitingly sows the seeds for the larger Immortal Universe.

Season 2 of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire premieres May 12 on AMC and AMC+ in the U.S.

Watch on AMC+