It’s not often that films arrive as unjustly dead-on-arrival as The Empty Man. The directorial debut of David Prior, who first cut his teeth creating behind the scenes documentaries for David Fincher, the film was an especially dire victim of the 20th Century Studios – Disney acquisition, dumped into theaters and left to die a quick box office death only a week after its first trailer debuted. Even now, The Empty Man sits at a paltry 27 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, shocking for a major studio release that cost 16 million to produce. The only thing Prior’s film seemed destined to be remembered for was that it was the last film to be released under the original 20th Century Fox banner. With the aid of some passionate and attentive viewers, however, the movie has started to gain some traction as a cult favorite — meaning it’s more than worthy of a first, or even second, look.
Based on a misleading trailer, audiences likely thought that The Empty Man was little more than a cheaply produced creepypasta or urban legend movie, not unlike the similarly titled Slender Man or The Bye-Bye Man. In reality, The Empty Man is a wildly ambitious, nearly two-and-a-half-hour cosmic horror procedural that borrows more from H.P. Lovecraft and deconstructionist philosophy than it does from any modern horror movie. The film’s headily cryptic narrative is engineered to be in conversation with the audience at all times, practically necessitating deeper analysis into its multitudinous verbal and visual clues for the connective tissue that enriches its central mythology. The ponderous density and ambiguity of Prior’s screenplay, rife with lengthy discussions of tulpas, materialization and subliminal transmission, will no doubt alienate some viewers. “[Ambiguity’s] gotta be very surgically deployed and you always run the risk that you’re going to be misunderstood,” Prior stated, “and that’s part of the tightrope walk of the whole project.”
Any preconceived expectations should be dashed by the film’s 30-minute opening prologue, which depicts a three-day waking nightmare for a group of hikers who encounter a strange skeletal effigy buried deep in the East Himalayan mountains. Following the noise of a pan flute, Paul (Aaron Poole) falls into a crevasse, and is found in a trance-like state in front of some not-quite-human remains by his friend, Greg (Evan Jonigkeit). “Touch me, you’ll die,” Paul whispers, less with fear than a sense of prophecy, but Greg doesn’t listen. With their exit rendered impassable by a snowstorm, the hikers take refuge in an abandoned house in the hopes that the now-comatose Paul’s condition will improve. Instead, a more sinister spirit takes hold. Opening the film with what is essentially a self-contained horror short, the significance of which is only revealed in the final ten minutes, is a bold but successful move. The cinematography, by Anastas N. Michos, captures the surrounding Bhutanese environs in chillingly atmospheric detail, perfectly accentuating the sense of inescapable doom that surrounds this vague, cosmic curse.
The main bulk of The Empty Man takes place 25 years later, and follows James Lasombra (James Badge Dale, continually underrated), a former Missouri detective investigating the disappearance of his neighbor’s daughter, Amanda (Sasha Frolova). At first appearance, Lasombra is a fairly archetypal protagonist, haunted by guilt over the deaths of his wife and young son one year prior. When he’s introduced, James is using an expired birthday coupon to get a free meal at a restaurant, only to be embarrassed when the waitstaff come to sing him “Happy Birthday.” But any lone detective clichés are amongst the film’s intentional designs. Especially on a rewatch, some of the story’s more frustratingly conventional elements appear in a wholly different light, as its propensity of genre inspirations, from noir to slasher to cult horror, feel less random than purposefully disarming. Lasombra’s investigations first lead him to a group of Amanda’s teenage friends, all of whom engaged in a nighttime dare to “summon” the Empty Man by blowing into an empty bottle, much like a pan flute, on a local bridge. Soon though, this path leads him into direct contact with the Pontifex Institute, a cult dedicated to the transmission of subliminal signals and led by the eerily disarming and nihilistic Arthur Parsons (Stephen Root).
Around the halfway point is where The Empty Man really goes off the rails. There’s plenty to chew on thematically, from the various double meanings inherent in its names and imagery to small, humorous details like the local high school being named after deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida. The word “pontifex” appears to translate directly in Latin to “bridge-maker,” and indeed, bridges play a large role throughout the film as connectors between the “real world” and the cosmological abyss. Subtext aside, Prior displays significant technical prowess, likely processed through years of studying auteurs like Fincher behind the scenes. There’s a similar cold efficiency to works like Zodiac and Se7en in the way he frames Lasombra’s investigation, each setting taking on an oppressive atmosphere that is as much as character as anything, or anyone, else. The Empty Man also features some impressive transitions, such as an overhead shot where a zoom-in on a map becomes a spinning aerial of a forest road and surrounding trees. It’s clear that a lot of thought and precision went into the crafting of each and every detail, something that cannot be said for many more successful mainstream horror films. One spectacular set piece involving a large group dancing around a bonfire is better than anything that’s ever been produced in the Conjuring franchise.
If The Empty Man falters, it’s in trying to do too much. Despite the lengthy runtime, the ending somehow still feels rushed, playing out in a mess of confusing edits and jump cuts that suggests a lack of final polish. This isn’t conjecture – resultant of Disney and 20th Century Studio’s almost criminal urge to rapidly dump the film in theaters, Prior has revealed that the version that was released was a rough cut. Some of the repeated flashback imagery is clumsy, as is the final look of the “empty man” itself, which at least in spirit form resembles little more than a cheap, spindly mass. Still, even as The Empty Man struggles to fully justify each of its numerous strands in the grand scheme of a rug-pulling reveal, you’re still left with that creeping sensation of nihilistic dread that the best cosmic horror induces. And perhaps those blemishes are what make the film so compelling. “The brain can itch,” one character says early on, and that’s exactly what the film does, tickling at the back of your brain until you scratch back. Like static, transmitted and received over and over until someone, or something, responds.
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