Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #15 The Empty Man

 Well, that was weird.  

The Hulu thumbnail said TEM was about a midwestern ex-cop who realizes that people's disappearances may have a supernatural bent to them.  So right away I was confused when for the first twenty or so minutes we were with underprepared Americans trekking in Bhutan in 1995.  One of them falls into a cave and when they find him, he is dazed, staring at a decidedly inhuman skeleton.  They drag him out, nearly comatose, and hole up in a nearby house while a storm rages.  His girlfriend finds a bone whistle clutched in his hand and, in the ways of stupid horror movie people, gives it a blow (not a euphemism).  Things go from bad to worse and let me just refrain from too specific spoilers by saying not everyone makes off that mountain alive.

And then we're in 2018 Missouri where nice and helpful ex-cop James Iforgethislastname (played by James Badge Dale, so we'll just go with "James") starts investigating some unusal events.  A group of teenagers play the "Empty Man game" - which is kind of like the Bloody Mary game only involves blowing across an empty bottle (KIND OF LIKE BLOWING ON A CREEPY BONE WHISTLE, EH?).  One girl disappears entirely; five kids more hang themselves under a bridge; and the last one has the world's most unrelaxing spa day.

There's also a doomsday cult and the front man is played by Stephen Root.

The Empty Man was recommended to me by my work friend Spencer: he and I have very similar pop culture tastes (he actually became my library when the public libraries were shut down in 2020, loaning me whole bags of books that I absolutely devoured), including loving horror films.  We do differ a bit: he doesn't love zombies the way I do; and he has a much higher tolerance for jump scares than I do.  He recommended TEM to me and I had to wait for a weekend viewing as, at 2+ hours, it's too long for midweek.

Spencer did mention that he felt this movie "had a lot going on towards the end" and boy oh boy.  Yes.  A very lot.  And it did seem to shift tonally throughout, and tried to be a more cerebral horror film than it really is.  There was a funny moment, when James was spying on the cultists who had just finished dancing around a bonfire, but otherwise it was rather self-serious.  Still, it's good for me to branch out, try something other than my beloved 1980s slashers.  Plus this movie came out in 2020 and didn't get much love then.  Let's give it what we can now.