The Empty Man - October 23rd 2020

[indisposed]

Originally Posted by Creed

The Empty Man | Official Trailer | 20th Century Studios - YouTube

You can tell they have no faith in this. They didn't even bother with the now prerequsite "trailer announcement before the trailer" tag at the start.

[Chaotic]

It’s another Fox movie that fell victim to the merger. Doesn’t surprise me Disney is dumping this

[Creed]

They're pretty much dumping out the remaining Fox movies.

[MazeRunner]

I hope this movie does well enough so we can get The Bye Bye Man vs. The Empty Man

[indisposed]

Originally Posted by CrazyBlu-RayFan

By the way, The Empty Man being an urban legend to be summoned, the actual summoning ritual, and the 3 days rule is not from the comic book at all (I'm currently reading issue 7). I hope the movie has more and is more accurate to the awesome comic book otherwise this is going to be a brutal sit at 2hrs and 17mins.

Reminds me of Bullet to the Head. I read the graphic novel when the film was greenlit back in 2011 and remember thinking "this is a bit more provocative than your average Stallone vehicle... I bet none of this will end up in the movie."

Fast forward two years later (it also sat on a shelf for a while) and sure enough, none of the interesting stuff was.

[CrazyBlu-RayFan]

Originally Posted by pikeman1

wait, the runtime is 2hrs 17mins? that's long, I thought the comic is pretty short, they must make up a lot of things then, or maybe including something from the sequel comic?

The comic, at least issues 1-8 of the main story (haven't read the sequels), took me about around 3 hours to read. Plus if it's a slow burn detective thriller like the comic book, the investigation parts are going to add to the runtime.

[CrazyBlu-RayFan]

Originally Posted by indisposed

Reminds me of Bullet to the Head. I read the graphic novel when the film was greenlit back in 2011 and remember thinking "this is a bit more provocative than your average Stallone vehicle... I bet none of this will end up in the movie."

Fast forward two years later (it also sat on a shelf for a while) and sure enough, none of the interesting stuff was.

And that's not to say an inaccurate comic book adaptation can't be a good movie, the 2010 film RED with Bruce Willis was nothing like the comic book at all (the comic being a very serious and complex story), but it was still a really fun and well made movie.

[CrazyBlu-RayFan]

Originally Posted by xbs2034

As far as I know, the runtime hasn’t been confirmed either by BBFC (which lists runtimes down to the second when they rate movies) or by people seeing it. But that does seem to be the common time thrown out by different websites, seems a good half hour longer than a film like this should be.

The 137 minute runtime has been confirmed by both the British Columbia (Canada) and Australian rating boards (had to post pics because the forum for some reason doesn't like the links):

[Show spoiler]

[Show spoiler]

[MazeRunner]

The Unnecessarily Long Runtime

[Chaotic]

Nice

[Saw Warrior]

Hopefully this movie gets polled by CinemaScore.

If it's as bad as the trailer, let's get that F CinemaScore like The Grudge and The Turning.

[CrazyBlu-RayFan]

Movie is about to start, I'll post my thoughts afterwards. I have about 16 people in my theater.

[CrazyBlu-RayFan]

As a movie:

Very slow and dull. The investigation elements are just uninteresting and a slog (and I say this as someone who likes slow burn investigation/detective movies), but this just feels like a 'been there, done that' diet Fincher movie. That is until the third act which gets actually interesting and surreal (though the twists are ridiculous and just makes the movie go completely bats#!t). However, that honestly just make things worse because the whole movie should've been more like that; trippy, surreal, and engaging (no matter how crazy). The acting and directing is fine, it's a competently made movie (so if you're expecting Bye Bye Man levels of unintentional comedy, I'm sorry to say you won't find it here). The movie just felt like a mix of a studio unafraid to take risks and a director/writer very inexperienced and is struggling to find his cinematic voice. It's not good or bad, just painfully average. Also the horror elements are super minimal (pretty much the horror scenes shown in the trailer is all it has), this is more or less a thriller. Also, despite being R rated the violence is pretty tame except for like 3 or 4 scenes.

As an adaptation:

This is an "in name only" adaptation for most of it, some stuff like the cult and a

[Show spoiler]comatose man being the source of The Empty Man

is from the comic, but the way the movie handles it is very different from how the comic book handles it. Those two things and "The Empty Man Made Me Do It" message is really all this movie has that in some way resembles the comic. The comic had better pacing, more intrigue, bigger scope, better characters, and actually mixed detective thriller and gory horror pretty damn well. This is nothing like the comic, at all. Also it's not a pandemic at all in the movie, hell I'd barely call it a virus (because it barely affects the town the movie set in, let alone the world). The 2004 Catwoman movie was a more accurate comic adaptation than this, that's how much it doesn't resemble the comic.

All in all, The Empty Man (2020) is a boring movie on its own (until the ending goes nuts) and a failure of an adaptation. If it's a rainy day and you have work around the house to do, it's decent background noise on Netflix, but that's about it. This comic deserved better and probably won't ever get a proper adaptation now, such a shame.

2.0/5.0

[CrazyBlu-RayFan]

Also, Disney was so lazy with this movie that they didn't bother to change the logo for this, it still says 20th Century Fox on it instead of Studios (this is despite the trailer saying Studios). So technically this is now the last movie released under the Fox name and logo.

[Foggy]

Originally Posted by CrazyBlu-RayFan

Also, Disney was so lazy with this movie that they didn't bother to change the logo for this, it still says 20th Century Fox on it instead of Studios (this is despite the trailer saying Studios). So technically this is now the last movie released under the Fox name and logo.

That’s genuinely hilarious.

[Chaotic]

Reviews/reactions seem pretty decent from what I’ve seen so far. Nothing like the trailer it seems.

[levcore]

Yeah exactly, reviews look pretty solid. I knew this looked like it was worth checking out.

[CrazyBlu-RayFan]

Originally Posted by Chaotic

Reviews/reactions seem pretty decent from what I’ve seen so far. Nothing like the trailer it seems.

Yeah, like I said in my review, this isn't really a horror movie, it's a thriller. I wished it was more interesting, because even if it wasn't the comic, I'd had love a well done detective thriller, but I myself found it boring (and I'm someone who thinks Blade Runner 2049 feels like 90 minutes). But I fully recommended you all go out and make up your own minds, because I can absolutely see people liking this and it growing a cult following, just because it tried to do something different.

[chad_1138]

Just got back, and honestly, my wife and I enjoyed the heck out of this. It is definitely not fast paced, but it had tons of atmosphere. As for the

[Show spoiler]long opening

, I thought it was fabulous.

[chad_1138]

Originally Posted by Chaotic

I really enjoyed this too. The opening was intense. I had no idea what would happen & didnt have one jump scare. Theres only 1 in the whole movie. It well shot & directed. I thought the transition from the map to the forest was cool.

Yeah, agree on all parts. Excellent film and total surprise!!! I’m hoping Come Play will be another nice surprise next weekend.