- Directed by David Prior
- Written by David Prior, Cullen Bunn
- Stars James Badge Dale, Martin Ireland, Sasha Frolova
- Run Time: 2 Hours, 17 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk6u9X1bW30
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
It doesn’t really get boring, but it is way too long. This could have been broken up into three one hour episodes and it would have been fine. All in one chunk was exhausting. But it is very engaging, and there’s a lot going on here to think about. It’s good up until the end, which is a totally nonsensical disaster that ruined everything that came before. (So says Brian. Kevin thought the ending was fascinating.)
Synopsis
Bhutan 1995. A group of hikers walk up the side of a mountain and see a bunch of monks on a truck leaving the monastery. They cross a rickety chain bridge that crosses an immense chasm. After crossing safely, Paul falls into a crevasse. Greg climbs down into the cave after him, and the two find a weird skeleton with too many fingers and arms. “If you touch me, you’ll die,” whispers Paul. Paul is unharmed from the fall, but he’s acting strangely.
They continue on their journey, carrying Paul, to a house. A storm rolls in, and they can’t figure out what’s wrong with him; it doesn’t seem to be physical. Greg thinks it may be psychological, and he’ll be fine in the morning. They find a strange whistle in Paul’s sleeve; did he pick it up down in that cave?
The next day, Ruthie looks outside and sees a strange robed figure out there. She runs out to ask for help, but he doesn’t look like the helpful type. She barely gets back inside and locks the door. That night, Paul takes his jacket and walks off into the night while everyone else is asleep.
On the third day, they all go out and follow Paul’s footprints to find him in front of a temple blowing his whistle. Ruthie then pulls out a knife and kills Greg and the other girl. She then jumps off a cliff, leaving Paul all by himself to blow his whistle. Credits roll (22 minutes in).
We jump ahead to Missouri, 2018. James Lasombra is a sad man who runs a security company. He goes home and has a conversation with Amanda, who tries to cheer him up with positive thinking. Apparently, he used to be a cop, lost his son, and he blames himself.
Nora, one of James’ friends and Amanda’s mother, goes into Amanda’s room and finds something bad. She calls James. It appears that Amanda has run away. “The Emptyman made me do it” is scrawled in blood on her bathroom mirror. The police aren’t much help, since Amanda is over 18.
James goes to see Davara, one of Amanda’s school friends, and he asks her about the Empty Man. “It’s just some stupid thing. If you go to a bridge after dark and blow into an empty bottle, something will happen.”
We flash back to a few nights ago, when Davara, Amanda, Lisa, Duncan, Meyer, Brendon, and Julianne were all out on a bridge. Amanda tells them about the bottle thing and dares them to try it. “On the first night, you hear him, then on the second night, you see him following you, then on the third night, he finds you.” They blow a bottle, then hear something coming after them and run away.
Davara, while explaining all this, keeps looking around, as she’s seen the Empty Man a few times now. As James tries to track down the other kids, they are all are missing.
He goes to the same bridge and finds a bottle in the road. Of course, he blows into it. He finds five of the missing kids under the bridge, hanged. No Amanda. “The empty man made me do it.” Is written there.
Meanwhile, Davara is at the spa and goes into the steam room. A hooded figure stabs her repeatedly with scissors. James gets a severe nosebleed while he talks to the police detective.
There have been a couple of leads that point to the Pontifex Institute, so James researches them online. They are a doomsday cult with many incidences of mass suicide and weirdness.
Nora comes over for a crying session, and obviously these two have a history. She asks to stay the night but ends up leaving unhappy. That night, James hears something outside his room. When he looks for the intruder, no one is there.
He goes to the Institute; there’s a weird questionnaire they want him to fill out. He follows the group of newbies right past a painting of the strange house from the pre-credit sequence. He sits and listens to a talk from Arthur Parsons. He talks about the nothingness of everything, and says this knowledge is brought to you by the Empty Man. He explains himself to James afterwards, but it’s a very strange encounter.
James goes into the basement of the institute and finds tunnels. He finds a group of people chanting and blowing into bottles; then he gets thrown out. One of the cultists says he’s seen Amanda in a different facility called “Camp Elsewhere.”
James goes to the camp and finds Amanda’s file there. He also finds an empty file on himself. He watches a strange videotape about a man with too many fingers. Then he sees dozens of people chanting around a bonfire. They all chase after him until he escapes in his car.
He goes to warn Nora and get her out of her house for safety. That night, he sees the Empty Man, but it vanishes before anything happens.
The next day he follows some of the cultists to a hospital room where they all bow before some man in a hospital bed. He then pepper sprays a cultist and interrogates him. The man in the hospital transmits thoughts, some from people, some from ancients, sometimes… something else.
James breaks into the cult’s record room and finds his own file, full of things that are impossible for them to know. He asks the nurse at the hospital about the strange patient; it’s all very mysterious. He goes into the patient’s room, and Amanda is in there. The patient is Paul, the only survivor from the pre-credit sequence.
James calls Nora, but she doesn’t know who he is. Amanda explains Paul isn’t going to live long, as a human host can’t last very long. They decided to make a new carrier. Yes, James is the carrier. They made him as a group; he is the Empty Man, only in existence for three days. She explains this as metaphysical jibber-jabber involving their force of will to manifest him. Yeah, alright. James himself was never real. He only thinks he is.
He goes into the hospital and shoots Paul in the head. As he comes out of the room, the doctors and nurses get on their knees and worship him.
Commentary
Who goes on a hike of that length without checking the weather forecast beforehand? That severe of a snowstorm would not have just suddenly appeared. Anyway, that was a neat-but-crazy-long pre-credit sequence, almost as if it were filmed as a short and inserted there.
It’s long, and there’s a lot going on here. It’s one weird thing after another, and it’s all pretty interesting. From the trailer, I was expecting a sort of enhanced Slenderman kind of thing, or even something like “The Ring” but there’s a lot more going on here.
It all starts off sensible enough, but the ending is just weird. It was all really good until Amanda explained everything, then it just went off the rails for me as it devolved into nonsense. I was having a great time for the first two hours, but the end made me feel I had wasted a week on it. Kevin on the other hand dug the ending and thought it was pretty great.