Movie Review--The Empty Man

"There is only the great binding nothingness of things."

--Pontifex Institute speaker, The Empty Man

A work of entertainment does not require Cthulhu-like tentacles or a connection to any other sort of specifically Lovecraftian elements in order to be cosmic horror.  All that it takes to represent this subgenre is an emphasis on horror with an explicitly existential, metaphysical, or epistemological connection to some grand in-universe truth.  In the case of The Empty Man, the figure is named in the title itself, which refers to a cosmic entity that is actually said to be all that truly exists by its followers and even some of its victims.  Lovecraftian tentacles and a pantheon of alien pseudo-"deities" are nowhere to be seen, but The Empty Man proves that it fits right alongside other examples of cosmic horror.  Now, the philosophies expressed by some of the characters are pathetic, logically impossible ideas selectively adhered to by their own proponents, yet The Empty Man is by far a philosophically deeper film than many movies of the past five years.  At the very least, it tackles issues of great philosophical significance.

Production Values

The Empty Man was largely made with the restraint of someone who understands that existential themes provide far more atmosphere than relentless, predictable jumpscares.  The first half of the movie, while still avoiding jumpscares, resembles a more traditional slasher story, whereas the second half leaps into a cosmic horror plot driven by concepts and revelations rather than murders.  Unsurprisingly, it is the second half that solidifies the film's most unique aspects and carries them to a grand twist that directly ties to the metaphysical and epistemological issues The Empty Man addresses--even if many of its characters are not rational enough to even consistently affirm logical axioms that cannot be false.  The last third of the movie does call for more explicit special effects, but elaborate CGI is absent from most of the runtime, leaving the characters and themes to hold everything together for more than two hours (far longer than most recent horror movies!).  Thankfully, shallow, apathetic performances are not found here, which a film longer than two hours particularly needs to avoid.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A former police officer, James Lasombra, gets entangled in a friend's family tragedy when the friend's daughter goes missing, leaving a message that something called the Empty Man made her do it.  Only shortly before this, the daughter had conversed with him about her philosophy of anti-realism--the asinine, self-refuting idea that nothing at all actually exists.  More local disappearances or deaths show a connection to this "Empty Man," whether it is a real or imagined figure, which spurs James to visit a group called the Pontifex Institute.  The PI asserts a self-refuting blend of anti-realism (the idea that nothing exists), idealism (the idea, at least in its purest form, that all of reality reduces down to consciousness), and relativism (the idea that truth is an illusion or nothing but individual perception/preference).  Moreover, its members are committed to living for their inherently false ideologies and enacting violence in its name.

Intellectual Content

The cosmic being referred to as the Empty Man is said to be the only thing that truly exists (a logical impossibility, as the laws of logic and even space itself cannot not exist), which contradicts other statements that nothing truly exists, which then contradicts the later claim that something might exist even though it cannot be known.  The philosophy of the Pontifex Institute is utterly impossible and self-contradictory: it shifts from phenomenological idealism to anti-realism to relativism to total skepticism depending on how it is described!  Each of the last three ideas are wholly, inescapably false to the point of obvious self-refutation.  In the case of idealism, the only one of the four that can be conceived of in a way that is not self-refuting, there is only the possibility of being true as long as it is strictly understood as the metaphysical dependence of matter on consciousness.  Any form of idealism holding that everything depends on consciousness (which would include the necessary truths of logic) is false because a handful of things cannot not exist, as aforementioned, and any form of idealism holding that matter is an illusion can be refuted, although almost no one seems capable of proving that matter truly exists 

Conclusion

Though its two halves do contain distinct approaches to the plot, something that is not necessarily harmful to a film's storytelling, The Empty Man presents a far deeper kind of horror setup than most movies ever do.  There is a place for quality horror focusing on purely human antagonists, haunting environments, or exotic creatures like vampires or undead serial killers, but some of the greatest thematic potential is found in the cosmic horror subgenre.  Of all the topics horror can explore, those related to the explicitly philosophical nature of cosmic horror, with few exceptions like the mixture of practical and abstract concepts in something like Saw, are the most likely ones to make an emotional impact on viewers for the sheer intensity and importance of the issues therein.  Even if The Empty Man's two halves could have been bridged more smoothly, it is a film that is not philosophically empty in its ambitions.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Some scenes show people slash throats, stab themselves, or assault or shoot others.

 2.  Profanity:  "Fuck" and "shit" are used several times.

 3.  Nudity:  A girl is shown nude from behind as she steps into a shower area shortly before her breasts are briefly shown from the front.

 4.  Sexuality:  A man and woman sexually interact with each other onscreen, although the man is fully clothed as far as the camera sees.