The Empty Man movie review by Movie Review Mom

RATING: R

LENGTH: 2 hours, 17 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: C-

IN A NUTSHELL:

You’d never know this was a Disney movie…sort of. Twentieth Century Fox has its label on it before the Disney acquisition. A trailer just showed up suddenly and recently and then only a week later, it was offered in theaters, hoping to cash in on Halloween, with hardly any marketing at all.

Based on Cullen Bunn & Vanesa R. Del Rey’s The Empty Man comic series published by Boom! Studios. This is the directorial debut of David Prior, whose great-grandfather was the silent movie star John Gilbert. The drama explores supernatural forces and is more of a psychological thriller than true horror.

You’re never going to want to blow into a glass bottle ever again after you see this.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

People die from brutal deaths with blood splatters and gore.
Profanity, including quite a few F-bombs.
You see the naked back and front of a teenage girl.

THEMES:

The power of thought.
“What if there’s a secret truth? What if our thoughts actually begin somewhere else and travel through us like a signal traveling down a wire, thoughts that are old, hidden, and singular.” – Amanda Quail (Sasha Frolova)
Thought + time + concentration = flesh Chew on that little nugget for a while to see if it makes sense to you…

THINGS I LIKED:

The opening music is creepy, letting you know you’re in for an interesting journey.
At the beginning of the movie, some hikers cross a pretty scary, but picturesque bridge. It turns out that the one traveler who hears the empty man becomes a “bridge” of sorts between humanity and the “Empty Man.” In fact, bridges are a frequent and important motif in the story. The word “Pontifex” can literally be translated to mean “bridge-maker” or the man who negotiates with God. The Pontifex Institute studies the “bridge” with its followers.
Beautiful cinematography.
Pay attention to some of the details. For example, when James first enters the Pontifex Institute, the camera shows a painting in the hallway of the very cabin in which the four travelers stayed earlier in the movie.
The sound design was really great. Super creepy.
If you’re a Lovecraft horror fan, you might enjoy this style of storytelling.
There is only a teeny, tiny moment of humor. It’s when the protagonist attends a lecture about far-out concepts taught at the Pontifex Institute and he explains to someone that he’s familiar with some of the ideas because he grew up in San Francisco. ha ha
Plenty of jump-scares for people who like that kind of thing.
There was an interesting cultural statement on the overuse of cell phones in one scene where a man attacked another man on a public street and threw him into his car to kidnap him. He looked around to see if anyone noticed, but everyone walking by was looking down at their cell phones and plugged into earphones or earbuds of some kind. Let that be a reminder to you to always look up from your phone every now and then to see what is actually happening in the real world!
If you enjoy contemplating Niche and other philosophers, you’ll get a kick out of some of the conversations and lectures at the Pontifex Institute. It was fun to see Stephen Root in a couple of those scenes.
James Badge Dale carries the weight of the movie well.
I actually like stories that are somewhat circular. The Skeleton Key is an example of that kind of scary movie done well.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

The trailer and the movie are quite different from each other.
The movie is unnecessarily long. In fact, you don’t even see the title card until 22 minutes into the movie! There are definitely some scenes that could have been shortened or cut completely.
Act 3 is kind of a confusing mess.
The movie poster is incredibly vague and uninformative. There should have been more triangles in the actual movie to connect with the poster. Maybe they’re just supposed to represent an empty vessel, like an empty man? An image with a bridge would have made more sense.
Like all horror movies, there are parts of the story that just don’t make any sense, but they’re still super creepy.
Why do characters always make such terrible choices in horror movies?!
Lots of horror cliches.
There are so many long stretches of not much happening on the screen to hold your interest.

INTERESTING LINES: