As far as the critical consensus goes, horror is about as bulletproof as it gets, with virtually any movie boasting a spooky enough trailer and an intriguing hook proving capable of turning a tidy profit regardless of what the reviews say. Flipping that notion on its head, though, The Empty Man flopped spectacularly in spite of a strong 77 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
Even though the user rating on the aggregation site is at a much lower 39 percent, it’s a miracle that the film even managed to make it into theaters at all given the torturous production. Writer and director David Prior’s feature-length debut was thrown into chaos by Disney’s takeover of Fox, which saw The Empty Man‘s biggest behind-the-scenes backer depart the studio.
Bad weather saw shooting shut down with only a week left to go in late 2016, but it would be almost a year before the final batch of principal photography was completed, before Prior was forced to piece together an assembly cut as quickly as possible in order to meet tax-friendly deadlines, although it wouldn’t be until October of 2020 that The Empty Man finally arrived – in the midst of a pandemic, no less.
All told, the supernatural chiller following a former cop on the hunt for a missing girl and stumbling upon a mysterious demon-summoning cult along the way could only muster $5 million at the box office on a $16 million budget, but The Empty Man has now risen once again to stake out a plum spot on streaming.
As per FlixPatrol, the troubled tale of pulse-pounding possession has become the sixth top-viewed title on HBO Max in the United States, a stellar return for a flick that was in danger of being lost to the sands of cinematic time.
