There’s a phrase in French describing the phenomenon of standing at the edge of an abyss and experiencing a brief curiosity of what it would be like to leap into it: l’appel du vide. Literally “the call of the void”. It’s also used more broadly to describe intrusive thoughts or suicidal behavior. In James B. Cox’s cosmic horror outing Call Of The Void, the phrase is applied to a literal call from the void, the out there, the otherness. Grief, loneliness, and alienation are all used to create a haunting feature that effectively crafts an eerie atmosphere of surreal instability and nightmarish imagery.
Moray is having something of a tough time in life. Not only is she dealing with the recent death of her beloved brother, but she’s also been recently let go from her job and her parents aren’t really helping things with their clingy helicopter tendencies. Frustrated and needing time to herself, Moray decides to head to a cabin in the mountains to decompress. All is going well until a quartet of college students show up to the neighboring cabin, ostensibly to record a musical project. At first, Moray is drawn to their carefree and friendly behavior, but she soon realizes that something isn’t quite right with them, and soon she finds herself drawn into a Lovecraftian nightmare of high strangeness.
Now, off the bat, I don’t think this film entirely hits the mark it set out to. There are moments in it where it feels like the zippers are showing. Some of the dialogue feels stilted and off and the direction seems not entirely there at times. That being said, this film still succeeds in being creepy as hell. The sound design especially, chock full of unsettling ASMR style wildlife noises and eerie howling strings for music, creates a very dreamy and creepy atmosphere. Cox is a smart enough filmmaker to only hint at any sort of horrific external presence working its will on the group, with the glimpses we do see being enough to establish this is certainly an objectively real phenomenon. Despite the concept of Village Of The Damned style groupthink not working every time, when it does work it’s chilling. Mina Sundwall as Lucy is especially effective, with her change from a bubbly aspiring neo folk singer into an icy and distant whatever really carrying the weight of the idea that these people are now something else. Caitlin Carver gives us an extremely sympathetic protagonist as Moray, someone who is not relatable not just in the way she’s handling her grief but also in how she’s dealing with what’s happening. Carver excels as the audience surrogate, and it’s not hard to put yourself in her shoes as she stumbles through the nightmare she’s found herself in.
Personally, I think the film’s strongest sense is its lack of any real closure or explanation. There’s a scene where Moray finds notes from a college professor who was in a neighboring cabin that connects him to the students, but they’re all vague enough so as not to come off as convenient exposition. It’s just enough to give the audience a sense that something is happening here but not so much as it explains everything away. We’re left with no real closure, no real explanation, no moment of insight into the chaos we’re seeing unfolding. And, at the risk of sounding cliched, that’s arguably more terrifying than anything else. Sure, it could easily come off as unfocused and lazy, but Cox does the work in establishing the fact that he’s more interested in simply unsettling the audience and crafting something weird as opposed to checking off a series of plot points in making a film.
Call Of The Void might not be your cup of tea. There isn’t a package wrapped up neatly with a bow, no google expert showing up to tell us about arcane experiments or Native American rituals, or anything as silly as that. Instead, we’re simply shown someone dealing with grief and loneliness stumbling into a situation where those two things make them especially vulnerable to some otherworldly presence. It’s an effective and eerie exercise in “less is more” and truly “what the fuck is happening” filmmaking without any sort of off the wall nonsense designed to simply shock the viewer.
CALL OF THE VOID is available on VOD on April 15th.
