A Bhutan mountain excursion and a slip into a mountain opening leads to the discovery of the bones of some strange entity. The adventurer who had the tumble (the always welcome Aaron Poole) is found transfixed by the skeletal thing and seems to be in a state of shock. His buddy carries him to a nearby abandoned cabin and there they spend the night with the other two members of their group. A bone flute is found and some unsettling entity shows up. They wake up on the third day to find the comatose man missing and a trail of footprints leading off into the snow-muted nothingness. They find him seated at a bridge, looking on in terror. When they try to snap him out of things, death follows. We then zip on over to Webster Mills, Missouri where a burnt out (is there any other kind?) ex-cop, James Lasombra, is getting by in relative isolation following a past tragedy. When a teenage girl goes missing, the girl’s mother calls James (a family friend) for help. There’s a message written on the bathroom mirror in blood which reads “The Empty Man Made Me Do It”. The cops dismiss it as a runaway due to emotional issues from her father’s death a couple years back and with her daughter being 18, there ain’t much they can do. James takes it upon himself to start looking into things. He finds a starting point with her strange journals about a creepy creeper called The Empty Man and the word “tulpa”. If you ain’t wise to the word, it’s basically a paranormal entity brought into existence by the power of thought. The story is that if you head to a bridge after dark, blow into an empty bottle and think about The Empty Man you will summon the damn boogeyman. Of course, the missing girl and her friends did just that... oops! James keeps digging and uncovers more missing teens and something that looks to be a bit more ritualistic than just urban legend mixing with teenage boredom. There’s a whole lotta death coming and it points to a secretive sect called the Pontifex Society and the oncoming doomsday. Supernatural horror slips comfortably into the kind of cabalesque conspiracy theory thrills of a 70’s potboiler and even manages to spice things up with some of that good old cosmic terror... all capably investigated by an interesting lead. As usual, there’s still more going on than meets the eye and our hero is more connected to the unsettling awfulness than he thought. Slain pets, hung teens (no, not like that ya dirty bird), nasty scissor violence, Stephen Root bringing his sinister charms, nightmarish visuals and an abundance of sinister vibes keep things moving. It takes the Pumpkinhead approach by setting shit up like a teens-in-peril fright flick and then going down a refreshingly unexpected path. It runs more than two hours but is never boring and that is always an impressive feat for a mainstream horror release. It does get a little up its own ass as the film winds down but there’s enough intrigue throughout to keep it in my good graces.
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