Once you move away from major studios, it turns out that Lovecraftian horror is rather prevalent. Seeing that The Void was rated higher than many offerings on FreeVee, well, why not. It was compared to the intellectual works of Benson and Morehead, but to me it matches more closely with Older Gods. Like many movies in this genre, The Void isn’t easy to follow and having commercial interruptions doesn’t help. (In movies made for television, directors know to offer cues at specified times to allow for a break. I’m not sure that those at FreeVee, or Tubi, or Plex, or their ilk, or even Hulu, know how to do this well.) So there are these mysterious cultists—somehow “new religionists” just doesn’t seem to cut it—who apparently want to bring about the apotheosis of their leader in a rural setting.
Meanwhile a local sheriff finds a young man fleeing from a couple of guys who are killing people and takes him to the hospital. This hospital, however, is being closed down and there’s only a skeleton crew there to handle emergencies until it can be decommissioned. Once the guys trying to kill the young man arrive, the hospital is surrounded by the cultists. By the way, there will be spoilers—just saying. It never is adequately explained how these killing guys know who these cultists are, unless it happened so fast that I missed it. In any case, all trapped in the hospital there’s the problem with a monster that has tentacles (Lovecraftian) that takes over the body of a nurse, then a tries to get a state policeman. Lots of axes and gunfire, and the numbers in the hospital are reducing.
It turns out that the kindly old doctor is the leader of the cult and he’s trying to raise the old gods so that he can bring his daughter back to life. The sheriff, who’s been the protagonist all along, knocks said doctor into the eponymous void, leaving only two people alive in the hospital. It’s not really explained where the cultists, who made it into the hospital, went. Nevertheless, this is a good example of horror and religion (which is ironically Lovecraftian). The doctor’s unconventional religion is the cause behind the hospital mayhem, and, apparently the killings being conducted by the interlopers are attempts to stop it. As a horror film it’s effective, if a bit disjointed. It seems that there’s still a lot to unpack from films that try to bring Lovecraft’s ideas onto the silver screen, major studio or not.
