MovieChat Forums > The Empty Man (2020) Discussion > Disney should be ashamed for the way the...

Disney should be ashamed for the way they treated this

posted 2 years ago by DoctorThirteen (14658)
3 replies | jump to latest

Well... Never saw that ending coming!

An ex-cop, haunted by the deaths of his wife and son, investigates the disappearance of a missing teenage girl. As he does so, twists and turns bring him to the urban legend of 'the Empty Man', and a ritual game played by local youngsters. And as far as the plot goes I can't say any more. This is a film where you really don't want to know, well, anything before going in. But I will say there's a superb central performance from James Badge Dale. This is his film, in every way.

It's based on a graphic novel, and was apparently the last film made by Fox before the Disney take-over. Disney, not having a clue what they had or how to market it, buried it. Limited release, virtually no publicity - criminal. It deserves to be far better known. Heck, the 20 minute prologue would make a great short in its own right (with an unexpected ending all of its own!).

After it finished I found myself thinking a few times, 'Hang on, what about...' Or 'That bit doesn't work...' But it does. It really does. Very, very clever, and very well executed. Huge congratulations to director David Prior.

8.5/10

[–] darkpast (8884) 2 years ago

no dvd or bluray either

[–] DoctorThirteen (14658) 2 years ago

Outrageous. I stumbled across it by accident as I was channel-hopping. Fortunately I caught it from the very beginning.

[–] [deleted] 6 months ago

I finally watched this last night after having it on my watchlist for the past year and a half.

It has some strong points. The photography, some of the scares and tension building, the mystery is played well. It even had some gory moments and and a nude scene.

The story, it's resolution more so, is something I'm not entirely on board with.

I can see why this movie didn't get a big marketing push. From what I know of general theatre attending horror fans, they would sour on this movie due it's ending and the movie would likely flop at the box office. To have a long (by horror standards) movie resolve in a 'you fucking what mate?' trippy, out-there manner is a death sentence, you need some payoff for general audiences.

It reminds me of Annihilation (2018). A movie which had it's would-be distributors shitting their pants and panicking. They ultimately sold it to Netflix because they just couldn't see any way to profit from it at theatres. Movies like Annihilation and The Empty Man simply lack commercial viability.

I'm probably being a bit harsh on the story here because this movie had all the makings of a modern classic but it's just a bit 'all over the place'. Quite sprawling with a bunch of different stuff going on. An urban legend, cults, supernatural spooky scenes, some gore, an investigative mystery veering towards sci-fi, twists and turns. It lacks a bit of refinement and linearity.

Still a very good movie and certainly an interesting one. It's one of the best horror movies of the 2020s thus far alongside The Night House (2020), Smile (2022), Prey (2022), Evil Dead Rise (2023) & Barbarian (2022).