The Chilling Cosmic Horror of ‘The Empty Man’ 5 Years Later

There’s an ongoing debate about whether or not so-called “cult classics” can exist in the streaming era. In a world where nearly every film ever made is available to watch at the click of a button, and where niche online communities can unite fans of even the most obscure international releases, how can we say that an easily accessible modern feature is part of the same underground movement as something like The Rocky Horror Picture Show when it’s just as easily viewed as the latest Avengers flick?

However, what many critics fail to realize is that this overwhelming availability of niche films is also responsible for burying potential hits underneath an ever-growing sea of similar releases. That’s why, at least to me, a modern cult classic isn’t necessarily a movie that cultivates a passionate fan-base through alternative means of distribution, but rather an easily accessible gem rescued from obscurity by online word-of-mouth.

My personal favorite example of this phenomenon happens to be David Prior’s criminally underseen The Empty Man, a cosmic horror tour-de-force that’s only ever really mentioned in whispers among lonely internet forums. And with the film celebrating a full five years since it was unceremoniously dumped into a handful of theaters by an uncaring studio, I think this is the perfect opportunity to look back on a hidden gem that came very close to becoming a modern genre classic.

Before The Empty Man, writer and director David Prior worked on behind-the-scenes documentaries for Hollywood big-shots like David Fincher and Michael Bay. It was only when Prior stumbled onto Cullen Bunn’s 2014 comic-book series The Empty Man that the filmmaker realized he had something special in his hands. While the Boom! Studios graphic novel chronicles the investigation of a mysterious global pandemic that causes people to commit suicide and leave messages blaming a metaphysical entity known only as “The Empty Man,” Prior envisioned a hypothetical adaptation as a smaller-scale prequel that would take place before the memetic disease became a worldwide threat.

Production on this weird little comic-book movie actually began way back in 2016, with Prior partnering with Mark Roybal – the then-vice-president of productions at 20^th Century Fox – in order to secure a hefty budget of $16 million. Unfortunately, it seemed like the universe itself was hellbent on sabotaging the picture, as a restructuring of Fox’s executive hierarchy, tax rebate deadlines and even bad weather ended up contributing to a long and painful production that wasn’t even allowed to use its entire budget.