The Void is essentially a high-end fan film: the kind of low-end schlock that you’d hope to make with a couple buddies during the summer with your dad’s old camera and a spare VHS tape. Although impressive sum for a crowd-funding campaign, $82,000 is a virtual non-sum to make a movie with: even legendarily low-budget movies like Halloween and Friday the 13 th had far bigger piles of cash to play with. To be clear, The Void is not the kind of slickly-produced, professionally-made film that we’ve long since gotten used to as the Hollywood standard. And when bodies start lurching back to life as Cronenbergian horrors, it becomes clear that something dark and ancient is lurking at the heart of the hospital, desperate for new victims. While they make no attempt to storm the building, they violently resist any attempt of those inside from escaping.

White-cloaked cultists surround the hospital. The lawman races him to the local hospital, but things take a dark turn shortly after he arrives. They torch the bodies and chase after the one that got away, who stumbles into a small town sheriff out on patrol. The film opens as a junkie escapes from an ominous compound in the woods, courtesy of a couple of roughnecks shooting the place up. This crowd-funded indie horror film was initially released in a paltry 31 theaters in early April and was quickly thrown out on DVD a month later. Its perplexing released seemingly tried to split the difference between traditional theatrical distribution and the more economical straight-to-DVD route. I can’t blame anybody for not having heard of this movie. This overlooked company now has another esteemed (but underseen) member to add to its ranks: The Void. Hush, one of the best movies in any genre from last year, was released straight to Netflix and still doesn’t have a physical release. Although now recognized as one of the better horror films of the last decade, Trick ‘r Treat went unrecognized for years because it was released strait-to-video, where positive word of mouth gradually got people to see it. So many great horror movies fail to get noticed by even the niche audiences they aim to please. You have to wade through a lot of dreck to make the genre worth your while, but if you do, they are some of the most rewarding and original movies being made today. Their audience will never be as big as the latest blockbuster, their attendance tends to die off quickly and because of how cheap they are to churn out, a disproportionate number of them are damn near unwatchable. Horror movies are a strange beast to try to tackle.

Cosmic horror movies