Splattered blood. A man’s body on the floor. Another terrified man runs out of the small, quaint farmhouse. He turns to see a woman, equally as terrified, run out of the same house, immediately followed by two grim, determined men. One of the men takes aim and BLAM! The woman falls to the ground. The first man runs away as quickly as he can, while the other two pour gasoline on the whimpering woman. They light her on fire, then drive away.

And a white-robed figure with a black triangle covering their face watches impassively.

And with that, The Void takes off like a rocket and never looks back. It is one hell of a ride.

Officer Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) is taking a break on the side of the road when the terrified man from the opening scene runs out of the woods and in front of his police car. After some back and forth on the radio about where to take the man, Daniel takes him to a nearby hospital that appears to be on the verge of shutting down, and also appears to be populated by lots of people he knows: Allison, his nurse ex-wife (Kathleen Munroe), the no-nonsense Dr. Powell (Kenneth Welsh), along with a pregnant teen and her understanding grandpa.

Soon enough, after a short period of time where we get a little background on each character, nurse Beverly suddenly takes a scalpel and starts peeling away her own face, then stabs and kills another patient, all the while plaintively repeating, “It’s not me, it’s not me…”  Daniel shoots her when she rushes to attack him. All is quiet again.

Daniel can’t get in touch with anyone back at the station to call in this bizarre situation, so he steps outside to get better reception. The hospital is being watched by one of those white-robed creeps, who takes a knife to Daniel.  Wait–the place is now suddenly surrounded by twenty or so knife-wielding  figures in white robes, all wearing that creepy triangle-festooned hood.  Where did they all come from?  Daniel makes it back inside, and is treated by the staff. 

For now, they are all safe as long as they all stay inside the hospital.

Yeah, right. 

Beverly then rises from the dead, turns to face the camera, and–at this point in my review, I’m just going to write exactly what I wrote as I watched this: “WHAT THE FUCK IS IN BEVERLY’S HEAD?”  There was some seriously messed-up stuff going on with poor Beverly, and then it got worse, and then it became almost comical as Daniel and the gang try to kill the…whatever it was that crawled out of that unfortunate nurse, and then that thing grew and grew and grew.

Directors Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski have reached into a big old 80s bag of tricks and pulled out all the stops.  They have been watching a lot of John Carpenter movies, and they are proud as heck to show it all off.  This starts out first as The Thing in Halloween II’s hospital, and then it starts moving into Prince of Darkness territory, with a jaunt through In The Mouth Of Madness for good measure. It’s wholly derivative and yet still highly original and just plain fun.  These guys know how to tell a compelling story.

I guarantee you have no idea where this is going. I laughed out loud, and I gasped, and I held my breath over and over again throughout its running time.  The creepy people standing vigil in their white robes are an arresting image and made me nervous anytime they were around. The creature effects are stupendous (Kostanski’s background is in special makeup effects, so I would expect nothing less) and really help sell the outrageousness of the plot. The finale is, literally, “out there” and was not as successful for me as the filmmakers might have hoped. I wanted something a little more concrete and decisive (but, you know, it ain’t called The Void for nothing)

All in all, this thing (heh) is a total winner, and I am looking forward to more from these two gentlemen. Uncle Mike sez check it out!

The Void is in US theaters April 7th.