The Empty Man Movie Review

The Empty Man (2020)

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Written by: David Prior (screen story by), David Prior (screenplay by), Cullen Bunn (based on the Boom! Studios graphic novel by)
Directed by: David Prior
Starring: James Badge Dale, Marin Ireland, Sasha Frolova, Stephen Root
Rated: R
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Plot
On the trail of a missing girl, an ex-cop comes across a secretive group attempting to summon a terrifying supernatural entity.

Verdict
I like a lot about this. If you blow across the top of an ordinary bottle you may just summon a monster. This keeps the tension high as you only have three days before the Empty Man gets you. The cult thing is a stretch, but it helps the plot. This creates a great mood, but the movie's just too long. You could also pick at a few elements of the plot, but it's less guilty than a lot of horror movies.
It depends.

Review
On the first night you hear the Empty Man, on the second night you see the Empty Man, on the third night he finds you. That's a great premise for a horror movie that keeps tension high. That premise is muddled by a cult of Empty Man followers in part because I don't know how the cult formed.

An introduction with four people hiking sets the tone for the movie and the plot to come. These scenes provide some context even if we don't know what exactly is happening, we know it's bad.

James Badge Dale plays James.

When kids in town start dying, James (James Badge Dale) embarks on his own investigation. He's not a cop, but he's acting like one. It seems like he gets a lot of leeway to talk to people and go into people's houses. He discovers a crazy cult masquerading as a self help institute that connects to the dead kids. I have to wonder how no one in the town had issues with this place. It seems ripe for community outcry.

This gets a bit long. The great mood can't overcome that. James ends up at a cabin in the woods that doesn't have lights but it does have a working VCR and television. As it continues this stretches suspension of disbelief. There are just too many things that would alarm people in the town in reality but don't in this movie. As I kept watching I became more disinterested. There's too many plot points that don't have a satisfying conclusion.

SPOILERS

This jumps from guy in the mountains getting possessed to twenty three years later and there is a cult getting messages from this guy. How did they meet?
How do multiple come to worship this guy in the hospital everyday and no one has issues with that? Even the kid cult comes in to the guy.
I thought the institute was founded in 2013, I could be wrong, but that would conflict with the grainy VCR tapes James finds. I assume that stretch is for effect.

While the movie kind of played at the end, I don't understand how a teenager, Amanda, has the acumen she does or how this cult conjured James. The movie tells us something to the effect that if you can imagine it you can create it, but I need a bit more explanation. That's just movie magic.