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Void, The

4/10

Stars: Aaron Poole, Kathleen Munroe, Kenneth Welsh, Ellen Wong, James Millington, Grace Munro, Art Hindle, Evan Stern, Daniel Fathers, Mik Byskov

Director: Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski

A combination of Assault on Precinct 13 and a very grisly, bloodily visceral horror film, this Canadian gorefest (rarely has the term been more appropriately used) is set in the Marsh County Memorial Hospital, where the characters are beset by tentacled monsters from within and mysterious white-hooded figures from without.

Patrolman Dan Carter (Poole), on a break, spots a man lurching along the highway. We know he's one of a couple pursued by men from a nearby house, who have shot and burned the fugitive's female partner.

The nearest hospital is the about-to-close and almost deserted Marsh County, run by a skeleton (sorry) staff which includes a doctor (Welsh), who has recently lost his daughter, a nurse, Allison (Munroe), who has recently lost Carter's unborn son, two other nurses, a visitor, and two patients, one of whom is dispatched by a nurse in an act of apparent demonic possession.

More deaths follow, but the terrors of the hospital corridors are nothing compared to what lurks in the cellars below...

The preposterous proceedings that follow are quite suspenseful at times, if tedious at others. But the whole thing is just too stomach-churning to to be of entertainment value to any but the most ardent gorehound.




David Quinlan

Canada 2016. UK Distributor: Signature. Colour (unspecified).
90 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 3, Drugs 0, Swearing 3.

Review date: 02 Apr 2017