Welcome to Hell’s Waiting Room
If you’ve ever looked at a hospital and thought, “You know what this needs? More tentacles and fewer functioning adults,” then The Void (2016) is the film you’ve been manifesting. Directed by Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie, this Canadian cosmic horror masterpiece takes the best parts of John Carpenter’s The Thing, Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, and every acid trip your biology teacher warned you about — then locks them all in a crumbling rural hospital and feeds them to the gods.
It’s gross, it’s grim, it’s gloriously gooey — and somehow, it’s beautiful. Like if a Renaissance painter discovered body horror and said, “Screw it, let’s make this divine.”
The Setup: Small-Town Cop, Big-Time Cosmic Problems
Deputy Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) is your classic horror protagonist: tired, slightly alcoholic, and doomed. While patrolling some nowhere town that looks like Canada pretending to be Maine, he finds a bloodied man crawling down the road — the kind of man who screams, “I’ve been in the prologue of a much worse movie.”
Naturally, Daniel does the rational thing: he takes him to the local hospital, which turns out to be half-abandoned, barely staffed, and fully cursed. It’s run by his estranged wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe) and a handful of people who look like they’ve all been awake since the Reagan administration.
What begins as a typical night shift quickly spirals into apocalyptic nonsense involving skinless nurses, cultists in white robes, reanimated corpses, and one particularly offended god with a flair for geometry.
The Hospital from Hell (Literally)
The hospital itself deserves top billing — a character more terrifying than any of the people inside it. Its flickering fluorescent lights, long echoing corridors, and mildew-scented hallways create the perfect mood: somewhere between a fever dream and a biology exam gone sentient.
And then there are the cultists — dozens of them, silent and motionless, surrounding the hospital like the world’s least helpful neighborhood watch. They wear white hooded robes with black triangles where their faces should be, proving that even eldritch evil has a dress code.
Inside, things go from bad to biomechanical nightmare fast. A nurse calmly slices off her own face and murders a patient. A tentacled flesh-creature bursts from a corpse like it’s auditioning for America’s Got Gory Talent. The dead won’t stay dead. The living barely stay sane. It’s chaos in the best possible way.
Dr. Powell: Because Every Cult Needs a TED Talk
At the heart of it all is Dr. Richard Powell (Kenneth Welsh), a kindly doctor turned interdimensional necromancer. He claims to have found a way to “conquer death,” which, in horror terms, means “invent body horror so graphic that even Clive Barker would politely excuse himself.”
Powell’s grand experiment involves skinning people, resurrecting the dead, and chatting with gods older than time — basically, he’s what happens when medical malpractice meets the Necronomicon. His motivation? Reuniting with his dead daughter, Sarah. Sweet, right? Except his version of “bringing her back” results in an abomination that looks like a fetus wearing a butcher’s apron. Parenting: it’s not for everyone.
When he finally peels off his face (as one does when communing with elder deities), he becomes a flayed mess of ambition and hubris — the ultimate middle manager of Hell.
Daniel: The World’s Most Unlucky Cop
Meanwhile, poor Deputy Carter is just trying to hold everything together — literally. Between seizures, hallucinations, and stabbing cultists, he becomes the kind of reluctant hero Lovecraftian stories thrive on: one man facing cosmic horror armed with nothing but confusion and a shotgun.
The deeper he ventures into the hospital’s basement, the stranger things get. There are monsters that look like meat sculptures by Salvador Dalí, resurrected corpses stapled together like IKEA furniture from Hell, and a triangle-shaped portal glowing like Satan’s screensaver.
Daniel keeps going anyway, proving that when you’re already divorced and traumatized, what’s one more descent into madness?
The Creatures: Handcrafted Nightmares
Forget CGI. The Void is a love letter to old-school, practical effects — and a nasty one at that. The monsters are a writhing symphony of latex, slime, and anatomical creativity. Tentacles sprout from holes that shouldn’t exist. Skulls stretch, torsos burst, and faces melt like discount candles.
Every transformation scene feels lovingly disgusting, like the filmmakers asked themselves, “What if David Cronenberg designed maternity wards?”
The best part? These effects were crowdfunded. Somewhere out there, hundreds of people looked at this movie and said, “Yes, I would like my money spent on a gelatinous corpse birthing an even slimier creature. Take my twenty bucks.” And honestly, God bless them.
The Cult of the Triangle: Geometry Has Never Been So Evil
The triangle symbol recurs throughout the film — carved into walls, stitched onto robes, glowing ominously in the void itself. It’s minimalist, elegant, and terrifying, like Satan took a graphic design course.
The cultists worship the entity behind that triangle, and while we never quite meet their god, its presence is everywhere: in the whispers, the distortions, the transformations. It’s Lovecraftian horror at its finest — that tantalizing mix of mystery and madness.
Because nothing says “cosmic dread” like realizing your entire existence might just be a doodle in an alien notebook.
The Style: A Symphony of Bleak Beauty
Visually, The Void is a feast of shadows and slime. The camera prowls through the hospital like a patient hallucinating on morphine, capturing the claustrophobia perfectly. The lighting — all harsh whites and sickly greens — turns every corner into a potential nightmare.
The sound design deserves its own cult. From the guttural screams of inhuman beasts to the low-frequency hum of the void itself, it’s less a score and more a constant reminder that your soul is under audit.
And yet, there’s something weirdly beautiful about it all — a kind of grotesque serenity in the madness. It’s as if Event Horizon and Hellraiser went on a yoga retreat and came back spiritually destroyed.
The Ending: Love and Tentacles Conquer All
By the time Daniel confronts the skinless Powell in front of the glowing triangle, things have gone full metaphysical meltdown. Monsters burn, cultists die, and the hospital practically dissolves into abstraction.
Powell offers Daniel a Faustian bargain: join him in eternal life, or die meaningless and alone. Naturally, Daniel responds by tackling him straight into the void.
And what do we get in the final moments? Daniel and Allison, hand in hand, standing beneath a black pyramid in a pale new world — possibly Heaven, possibly Hell, possibly Saskatchewan. It’s ambiguous, romantic, and delightfully nihilistic.
Back in the hospital, the survivors stumble into daylight, traumatized but alive. The portal is closed — for now. But you can’t help thinking the triangle is still out there somewhere, waiting for a sequel — or at least an art exhibit.
Final Thoughts: “The Thing” Meets Existential Crisis
The Void isn’t just another retro horror homage — it’s a love letter to a time when horror movies weren’t afraid to get dirty, weird, and deeply philosophical. It’s as if the filmmakers poured all their affection for 1980s horror into a blender, added some existential despair, and hit “liquefy.”
Sure, the plot occasionally collapses into nonsense, but that’s part of the charm. Cosmic horror isn’t meant to make sense — it’s meant to remind you that you don’t.
So, if you like your scares slimy, your cultists well-dressed, and your reality dissolving into triangles, The Void is your new favorite nightmare.
Final Rating: ★★★★★
Mood: Cronenberg meets cosmic dread, served with extra gore
Best Watched With: Dim lights, steady nerves, and a geometry textbook to cry into.
