GHOSTS OF THE VOID (2023)

New On Demand and digital download from Speakeasy Films!
Directed/Written by Jason Miller.
Starring Tedra Millan, Michael Reagan

Jen (Tedra Millan) and her husband Tyler (Michael Reagan) are a couple evicted from their home and forced to live in their car. Looking for a safe place to spend the night, they pull into a park in an affluent neighborhood only to be tormented by three masked strangers bearing weapons. Jen and Tyler attempt to survive the night while the film flashes back on how they arrived in this very dire situation.

GHOSTS OF THE VOID has a very familiar premise. For the most part, it’s THE STRANGERS in a car, where a couple on their last leg find themselves tormented by masked creeps who appear and disappear in the darkness around them. Much of the same techniques used to make Bryan Bertino’s classic thriller work so well are utilized in GHOSTS OF THE VOID such as long drawn-out segments with masked marauders moving strategically in the background. While it might not have captured the atmosphere completely and immersed the viewer as much into the suspense as THE STRANGERS did, writer/director Jason Miller does ape the style well, delivering quite a few sequences of sheer terror.

One of the things that separates GHOSTS OF THE VOID from THE STRANGERS is the reason the couple is in trouble in the first place. Given the current culture of the country, it is easy, believe me, too easy, to find oneself overwhelmed by bills, responsibilities, and other aspects of adulthood. Believe you me, I’ve paid my dues in situations like this and while I’ve never lived out of my car, I’ve come damn near close a time or two in my long and storied life. What GHOSTS OF THE VOID does so well is illustrate how easy it is to take one or two wrong turns and how life’s pressures can take their toll on a persons’ psyche as well as the bonds of a relationship. Tyler is a writer who is pursuing his dream to write his dream novel. Jen is supportive of Tyler’s dreams, doing what she can to make a living. But as the bills pile up, filmmaker Miller along with the deft performances of Millan and Reagan, illustrate just how many problems can come from this type of situation. Add in the fact that Tyler is a drunk and Jen is at her wits end with panic attacks about bill collectors and evictions, and that’s a whole lot of real world drama going on. But Miller does a great job of making sure all of the melodrama doesn’t overshadow the horrors that are lurking in the darkness just outside the vehicle. All of the relational and adulting stuff only intensifies the situation all the more in this expertly paced white-knuckler.

While the idea of a strong female lead is not at all new to the horror genre, there has been a rise in stories featuring a woman who has become increasingly fed up and resentful with her ineffectual and entitled partner. I don’t know if this is a sign of the times we live in, but seeing these themes show up in the recent DO NOT DISTURB, last year’s INFINITY POOL, the excellent Danish thriller SPEAK NO EVIL (which is getting a big budget American remake next year), and now here in GHOSTS OF THE VOID, it’s hard not to see some kind of message about the male’s role in a relationship and how modern culture may have caused that role to atrophy. It’s a subject a want to explore maybe in a future essay now that I’ve noticed this trend in more subversive and “elevated” horror. As is, GHOSTS OF THE VOID once again depicts the lead male as downright useless in day to day life as well as during a time of great crisis. How those notions were implanted in the current cultural mindscape is debatable, but this trend is noticeably present in a lot of films these days and deserves some dissecting real soon.

GHOSTS OF THE VOID, though the vague title leaves a lot to be desired, is an impressive small scale horror revolving around both modern relationships as well as things that lurk in the dark. I definitely recommend this low budget, but high impact little shocker.

Check out the trailer here!!