By Gabby Foor
I’ve seen a few films this year about grief, death, coping, and the toll it takes on our minds. Most of these stories are epics that lead in impossible directions, lit and shot with intensity that doesn’t always reflect the emptiness you descend into after a traumatic event. The Empty Space begins using bare bones cinematography and anxiety-inducing color palettes to set a nuanced, realistic feeling of agoraphobia and depression. While it begins slow, even for a clipped run time, The Empty Space leaves some room in its second half to fill us in on its secrets and paint a slightly more emotional picture than just the sharp lens of anxiety we view through our main character’s eyes. Similar in style to From Black and with some likeness to After She Died, this picture has modern influences from what seem to be popular ideas now. However, unlike its peers, I’m not sure if the leisurely pace and uneven characters, held up by a seemingly fatigued cast, can bear the weight of its heavy storyline.
Aimee (Valerie Alene) is afraid of everything, it looks like. After a colorful, starry cosmic-looking opening hints at some past tragedy in her life, we meet with the stark yellow exterior walls of Aimee’s home. A delivery driver is frustrated with Aimee’s specific directions to leave the food in order to keep herself unseen and within the apartment. Eventually the food is left and we see Aimee, caught in memories and orange pill bottles, battling some anxiety before finally willing herself outside. Seeming distant from her boss, Aimee struggles through a day of a brutally ringing phone she seems too scared to answer, an issue which ultimately leads her to quit. Now with no job, Aimee is back to rocking back and forth in a panic outside, until mysterious Mel (Rachel Olsen) approaches and asks how she is, handing her a flier to a support group and saying it might provide help.
Soft piano music graces us as Aimee digs into a box labeled “Noah” which seems to spark some memories, leading her to the support group called Healing as One. Although quickly made uncomfortable by some unwanted advances, Aimee tries to make it through sharing, briefly connecting with a group member, James (Pablo Medina) over their mutual fear of leaving the house. This goes wrong when she adds, “Do you see people following you too?” She recounts that she sees shadows following her and the group dubs her “for real crazy.” The group leader attempts to restore order and gives a speech about choice and ways of continuing life after tragedy. Choices are paramount, choices can haunt us, including continuing to choose fear, as Aimee notes. “So long as it’s your choice,” is the group leader’s final word on the matter.
We flash back to a happier time where Aimee is socializing and throwing a party for her partner Noah (Joe Sinclitico). Outside it appears there’s someone preparing to enter and we hear a knock: a masked figure with a handgun enters the home, and fires. A very retro score covers the horror of the nightmare, now broken, as Aimee heads to a bookshop where she runs into Mel. Mel wonders at Aimee’s presence there and also questions the omnipresent yellow beanie she never seems to take off outside. Aimee curiously and jokingly asks Mel if she’s a witch regarding her very abstract reading selections, such as “Psychic Perception” – a “must read” according to Mel, as Aimee is looking for an answer as to “why we are here.” Mel’s says there’s an answer for everything in the books, but don’t look for specifics, as the best answer she has is “shit just happens.” Her favorite idea from “The Power of the Mind” is how our perception dictates our lives. But Mel expresses she just wants to believe on a grander scale that there’s “more to all this,” especially after the accident that put her in group had left her previously unable to walk. Both women want meaning in a world that doesn’t seem to make sense to them, with its apathy towards their pain and loss.
I’ll start with my one pet peeve here: I’ve never seen a more unbelievable portrayal of a support group, even as the characters develop and give excuses for poor behavior. Any of that negativity, continuous borderline sexual harassment, or back-talk to a new member would result in that person being removed. This, plus teasing, trying to take away coping mechanisms like Aimee’s beanie, and heavy outside socializing make the group a confusing place sometimes. Some messages come through loud and clear like the topics of isolation, doubt, longing and to some degree, hope. However, others, described abstractly in conversation or showed through shifting perception or flashbacks that rely on inference, can be confusing both to understand conceptually or visually. Semi-emotional descriptions that attempt to relay what lies beyond the veil can sometimes clarify what our characters are trying to understand from the universe, with a returning character about halfway through the film providing insights. However, in spite of these enormous revelations, even as Aimee is supposedly in the throes of hysteria trying to understand aloud, “What’s happening to me?” it lands flat, as most lines do, and the leads never seem to commit past monotone disappointment. Nothing ever quite frightens either, as the main antagonist wavers between trying to give Aimee what she wants or playing with her sanity. Practical and special effects also don’t land within this film’s tight budget as colorful CGI and unfortunately positioned green screens look misplaced in the previously raw settings of The Empty Space.
The Empty Space takes some big swings at emotional topics and sometimes lands its blows, but for the most part feels devoid of much of the emotion it is supposed to deliver. With an ending premise that could have been pulled off more smoothly and clearly, I can say I enjoyed the premise but not the execution. It’s comforting to know where our heroine lands in her journey, but the journey we take to get there is one that requires more patience and disbelief than I could suspend, as well as turning a blind eye to effects that the film didn’t need. As a whole it is a decently told story of grief and perception, but lacks the emotion and performance that similar films with this idea bring to the table. It also plays into a couple of unfortunate stereotypes of trauma victims (“I wish I was still on drugs” – not always funny). Unfortunately, as the title suggests, this film does leave a lot of emptiness, but in the form of cast dedication, unanswered questions and confusing concepts, visuals and backdrops that never feel all the way there.
The Empty Space is available from May 30th, 2023 via Bayview Entertainment.