Philosophers have spent their lives trying to rationalize reality, all boiling down to the question “how do you know for sure?” The Empty Man (David Prior 2020) explores this idea as a means to propel the story. The blur between what we think is real and what isn’t makes for some interesting, and sometimes confusing story elements. The truth of reality is explored throughout the film, peeling back the layers of our day to day lives and into the true nothingness of it all. The film throws a lot of ideas at the audience, conveying them both visually and audibly. Visually, the film is well shot, the camera angles show character dynamics and the imagery becomes very haunting. There are a variety of locations and good production value, keeping the audience's attention the whole time. However, there are some problems in the screenwriting. The dialogue becomes clunky and out of place that it pulls you out of the story. I’m more focused on the on-the-nose dialogue instead of the captivating visual story. Overall, The Empty Man is a philosophical head trip, but don’t expect to be fully immersed.
The rest of the review contains spoilers for The Empty Man, and contains descriptions that may be disturbing to some readers, discretion is advised.
The story is set up with a cold open that almost feels like a short film. It introduces the start of the Empty Man, the process of how a normal person turns into a transmitter of energy. Set in 1995, a group of tourists hike up a mountain in Bhutan. One of them is tranced and mindlessly falls down into a religious shrine. Whatever power that dwells down there takes hold of him, emptying him of thought and feeling. From this, I thought the film was going to be a survival film, his three friends trying to weather the cold while also trying to figure out what is wrong with him. But this story ends as soon as it starts, everyone but the now Empty Man dies, while he is left muttering in the cold. This intro sequence is very compelling, and is a nice reversal of expectations. It makes us think we’re in one kind of movie, but really we’re in another. It is a bit confusing at first, but it does set up the end of the story, giving the audience that “aha” moment along with temporary catharsis.
The rest of the review contains spoilers for The Empty Man, and contains descriptions that may be disturbing to some readers, discretion is advised.
The story is set up with a cold open that almost feels like a short film. It introduces the start of the Empty Man, the process of how a normal person turns into a transmitter of energy. Set in 1995, a group of tourists hike up a mountain in Bhutan. One of them is tranced and mindlessly falls down into a religious shrine. Whatever power that dwells down there takes hold of him, emptying him of thought and feeling. From this, I thought the film was going to be a survival film, his three friends trying to weather the cold while also trying to figure out what is wrong with him. But this story ends as soon as it starts, everyone but the now Empty Man dies, while he is left muttering in the cold. This intro sequence is very compelling, and is a nice reversal of expectations. It makes us think we’re in one kind of movie, but really we’re in another. It is a bit confusing at first, but it does set up the end of the story, giving the audience that “aha” moment along with temporary catharsis.
For the remainder of the film, we follow James, a retired cop, who is forced back into action when his neighbor’s daughter, Amanda, goes missing. In the chase to find her and her friends, he finds the true meaning of his existence. As James investigates, we come across some distracting dialogue. For example, a guy James has never met before says, “hey, you’re the famous retired cop, undercover right?” I couldn’t let that go for the rest of the film. The guy isn’t even introducing himself, he’s just in the room and awkwardly says it. After watching the film, I understand that dialogue was meant to establish James in the world. Characters beside James confirm his extenstence by saying that they’ve known him for a long time. It’s a way for the dialogue to reveal plot, but it didn’t maintain audience immersion through its delivery. That line along with a few others were not realistic enough to be believable, which made it hard to stay immersed.
The story is structured around an unconventional philosophy. The idea that thought is the creation of all things, That nothing is real unless we think it, anything outside of understanding through thought doesn't exist. James finds that Amanda and her friends are connected to the Pontitfix Society, which believes in this line of thinking. Furthemore, they believe that to truly understand this notion, you must receive energy waves transmitted from the Empty Man. The Empty Man is no longer a person, but a tool for understanding the “black endless chaos” of true reality. The monster of the film transmits messages through the Empty Man to the members of the Pontitfix Society. They become hive minded, subdued into spreading its ‘truth.’ The previous Empty Man, the hiker from the beginning of the film, has been left to be cared for in a hospital, where all the followers of the Pontitfix Society go to receive the truth.
The story is structured around an unconventional philosophy. The idea that thought is the creation of all things, That nothing is real unless we think it, anything outside of understanding through thought doesn't exist. James finds that Amanda and her friends are connected to the Pontitfix Society, which believes in this line of thinking. Furthemore, they believe that to truly understand this notion, you must receive energy waves transmitted from the Empty Man. The Empty Man is no longer a person, but a tool for understanding the “black endless chaos” of true reality. The monster of the film transmits messages through the Empty Man to the members of the Pontitfix Society. They become hive minded, subdued into spreading its ‘truth.’ The previous Empty Man, the hiker from the beginning of the film, has been left to be cared for in a hospital, where all the followers of the Pontitfix Society go to receive the truth.
We discover that all of this thought, no matter how outlandish it may seem, is true in the film’s universe. That flesh can be made through thought and that only what can be thought is real. This is proved by James, who we discover is not a real person who has a life and relationships, but a man, about 3 days old, constructed by the Pontitfix Society to become their new Empty Man. Before this discovery, James is talking with others, remembering his past, and working to find out who is behind the murders. James' realization of this reverts his mind into a state of hallucinations and non-being. It blurs the line between what we think is real and what we think are hallucinations. The end is a collage of imagery, revealing James has been in multiple places at once and that those he had talked to don’t actually know him. We ask ourselves if what we saw even happened, or if it was all some sort of dream in James’ mind.
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