It’s like Slender Man meets Candyman without the hook and the bees. The supernatural elements are there, but the story is kind of a mess.

The movie starts with 4 hikers in some remote foreign country. One of them falls into a crevice that opens to a cave with a strange statuesque alien-looking skeleton. The hiker starts acting strange like he’s possessed by some evil spirit. This whole sequence takes 20-30 minutes to establish the origin of The Empty Man. I guess.

Then the movie really starts when we are introduced to James, a broken man who lost his wife and son in a car accident. James’ friend Nora has a daughter, Amanda, who went missing. In an attempt to find Amanda, James goes down a rabbit hole with more questions than answers. He finds a cult that seems to be followers of the Empty Man spirit.

In a twist, we are brought full circle to the original hiker dude, Paul, in a coma state in a local hospital. The Empty Man needs a new vessel and James is the perfect candidate.

There are some eerie moments and some really tense moments, but the movie really could have been 30-40 minutes shorter. The biggest issue I had was how empty the story was and how forgettable that made the movie. At no time did I feel like the flirtations with the surreal metaphysics were going far enough or even likely to pay off by the end. The attempts were made, but the hesitation kept this one from fully realizing its true potential.

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