The Void.
For fans of horror maestros John Carpenter and Stuart Gordon, nothing fills a void like good, old eighties-fashioned gore. Which is what we get from the writer-director team of Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski, unabashed fans of Reagan-era blood, slash and goo.
Set in an unusually remote hospital (where the phones don't work and neither does the plot), The Void has to do with mysterious, serious and uncommunicative slashers in white robes who lay siege to a diverse small-town group that includes a police officer, a pregnant girl, an excitable type with a gun and a doctor (Kenneth Welsh), who tells us that more people die in a hospital than anywhere else.
The story is hard to follow and so is some of the action: Gelatinous creatures are low-lit, which probably has more to do with budget realities than aesthetic choice. Unsettling and not jokey at all, the hell of The Void will be heaven to some.
Brad Wheeler