In the Flesh: The Empty Man

“You know that child’s game?” asks cult pastor Arthur Parsons (the inimitable Stephen Root). “You say your own name enough times and it becomes just… gibberish. But if repetition alone has the power to reduce it so, then which is true: your name, or the gibberish?” The Empty Man, David Prior’s little-seen 2020 occult horror flick, structures itself around this question, and the fakeouts it pulls in that vein are a particular delight for horror fans sick and tired of dead wives, dead sons, and the sad, bearded dads they leave behind to mope and investigate things. The film shows you something you’ve seen innumerable times and finds a way to make that form into function, to play with the structure of urban legend horror a la Bloody Mary, Theorosa’s Bridge, and Barker’s Candyman. The resulting film is no deeper for subverting these tired tropes, but it is considerably fresher and more interesting.

Nor is The Empty Man’s appeal limited to its thoughtful approach to its sub-genre. Prior and cinematographer Anastos N. Michos are punching well above their weight class here, lavishing care and attention on the most workaday images so that much of the film is occupied with nested doors and windows, halls and bridges, a tangle of liminality which manages to straddle the line between lived-in and off-putting. The film’s bridge scenes in particular are beautifully handled, toying with the inherent exposure and vulnerability of the space through forced perspective and limited field of view. A mid-movie sequence in which everyman cypher James Lasombra (James Badge Dale) stands alone on a deserted, rusting bridge is particularly haunting, and the attention the film pays to an earlier scene of teenagers lying there under the stars is paced and structured around physical minutiae in a deeply gratifying way.

The apparition itself is a strange case, its earliest appearances are nothing special, burdened by cliched stop-and-start scuttling and plagued by image-diluting shaky cam. In its final moments, though, it undergoes a fantastic metamorphosis, hands and bone unfolding from its innards, its veiled features twisting and morphing in a collision of practical and CGI effects as accomplished as these things get nowadays. It’s a pity it doesn’t come together sooner. The film’s babble about nothingness and oneness is surprisingly well-written and thoughtful, especially as delivered by Root after his address to a crowd of believers and as typified by a truly unnerving scene in which a seance circle attempts to manifest a tulpa — a kind of malevolent thought-form — in an unlit basement. A small handful of limp wisecracks and an ending sequence I liked better when I saw it in Kill List and Hereditary are the film’s most noteworthy missteps, but next to its gorgeous camera work, clear understanding of and affection for its own genre, and arresting imagery, they’re a small price to pay.