If you were to watch 2016’s gnarly Lovecraftian nightmare The Void without any idea of how much the film cost and were then asked to guess what the production budget was, there’s surely no way anybody would get the number right.
A supremely slimy and spine-chilling horror that maximizes every penny of its minuscule budget and throws it right up there onscreen in the gooiest fashion possible, early word-of-mouth buzz predicted that writing and directorial duo Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie had an instant cult classic on their hands. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.
Bolstered by stellar reviews that have it sitting Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 78 percent score, The Void also proved to be a hugely profitable enterprise after earning close to $380,000 at the box office. While those figures sound infinitesimal compared to what typically constitutes a smash hit, the film astonishingly cost less than $80,000 to make.
The bare-bones narrative finds a police officer plunged right into the midst of a harrowing existential mind-f*ck when a string of bizarre and increasingly gruesome occurrences begin unfolding after he brings a patient to a suspiciously empty-looking hospital, and it all seems to be tied to a shady cabal of hooded figures lurking in the distance.
Psychedelic, mind-melting, drenched in blood and guts, impeccably designed, remarkably accomplished on a visual level given the shoestring budget, and plenty more superlatives besides, The Void has slowly been wrapping its tendrils around widespread adoration for years, with a Reddit thread once more underlining that if you were to design an ever-lasting favorite designed to cater to one target demographic of gorehounds that they’re all guaranteed to love, it would look a lot like this.
