What in the serious fuck did I just watch? Someone please help me before I scratch and pull my brains out. Holy shit…this movie, I swear. A couple of Redditors claimed that this was the creepiest movie out there. Not scary, but creepy. So, I thought, why not? It was then I realized I had already watched this movie some time ago. However, I think I slept through it and forgot what it was about because there is no way I would have forgotten something like this. This time around, I vowed to watch the entire movie with my undivided attention. I mean, movies that brainfuck you can be cool, but many viewers can also dismiss it as the writers and producers simply copping out of having to give the viewers something conclusive. Instead, it’s “up to the viewers” to interpret the story and ending.

I don’t know where to even begin. Seriously. I had to read so many Reddit posts to get an idea of how others much smarter than me give their explanations. So the beginning to the first half of the movie was pretty solid. The introduction was intense and set up the whole creepy urban tale of summoning The Empty Man. The second half, I think, was still alright, but it eventually gets weird (yes, I know, that’s the entire point), and then the ending hits you and you’re like, WTF? OK, so whatever. I’m just going to write what I think are some of the major points and best explanations I can think of, coupled with what I got from Reddit.

The first point is viewers not really being told just what the hell the evil entity that is supposed to take over The Empty Man’s goals are. Like, ok, it’s supposed to be evil. That’s a given. But anything else would be nice. I think the entity is supposed to just sow chaos on Earth. Murderous chaos. In the beginning, we see Paul literally being able to telepathically command one of his friends to murder the others along with herself. This “power” also wasn’t discussed at all afterward.

When Paul slipped into the cave because he was lured there by the sound, why did he tell his friend that if he “touched him,” he would die? Nothing from what I remember has anything to do with touch when it comes to summoning The Empty Man. This was also never explained nor mentioned again in the movie. It’s also extremely clear that the evil entity is very, very specific when it chooses its next host, and physical contact has nothing to do with it. It would have made a little sense if physical contact were how the entity is able to control the victim. But if that was the case, it would have been Paul’s friend who touched him that killed the others on the bridge. Not the girl.

James as the next Empty Man. This is the big one. So, the big reveal at the end is when Amanda tells James that he’s just a construct that the cult was able to conjure up via their collective thought and that he only existed for three days. The moment we saw James running on the bridge and him using his “birthday coupon” for a free meal is when he was first conjured up into existence. The other shocker is that all of his memories of what he thought to be his wife and son crashing in a car while he was banging her friend were all just planted into his head also by the cult. To be the next Empty Man, they needed a construct that had to experience several emotional experiences, mainly guilt, sorrow, regret, and the one they were missing during their earlier trial runs, fear. So the obvious question now would be if the cult members were able to create James with the other emotions pre-installed. Why couldn’t they just think of a version of James that’s all complete and ready to go as the host? Why have him go through this whole thing just for him to experience fear?

The other big thing is was everything even real? Is James real? Did what he go through actually real and in the present or was it one of those “all in his head” bullshit type of ordeal? I’m in the camp of believing that yes, the stuff that James go through, the events that we see as the viewers, are real and not just in his head. For example, there are scenes in which we break completely away from James point of view. Like when the girl was killed in the shower. James would not have known that scene and what happened there. However, there a bunch of questions. Are we to believe that everyone, other than James, was in on it ala Shutter Island style? Did the cult really planned everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, just so they could get James to the point of the last scene in the hospital where he busted a cap at Paul and assumed the role of the new Empty Man?

Just how powerful were the cult and its members? It’s been discussed that they might even have the powers to alter and/or plant memories into actual humans. I call complete bullshit on that one because I didn’t see anything to suggest otherwise. At the end, James calls Nora to inform her that he finally found Amanda. However, not only does she not know what he’s talking about, but she doesn’t even recognize who James is. Some suggest that the cult planted memories into Nora, similar to what they did to James, and at the last scene when they have James as a complete host, they basically took away her memories and she actually, like real kind, doesn’t know who or what James is talking about. I’m taking the easy way out here and simply believing that Nora is part of the setup and also a cult member to play James like a fiddle, just like the rest. Why not? She would have known what memories were planted into James and simply could have played along. As to why she chose to pretend not to know James instead of saying “Gotcha!” I have no idea. Or maybe she’s also a construct like James. In which case, yes, the cult would have been able to plant and likely remove her memories at will. Dear God, help me, my head is spinning.

I still don’t understand what killed those kids under the bridge. Was it the evil entity through the current Empty Man at the time, which was Paul? Is the power of the entity able to mess with the victims minds until they crack and eventually drive them to suicide? It’s been discussed that the entity is some Lovecraftian nightmare, and if that’s the case, then it sort of makes some other stuff regarding it more digestible.

There’s so many other points to discuss, as well as the symbolism (bridges, oh, the bridges) that comes with it. However, I’m done at this point. There are actually some pretty cool sites that go into this movie in much more detail and are able to provide a much clearer analysis and explanation of what happened. The Empty Man isn’t really a bad movie. Hate it or love it, it got me thinking. Some are stupid things that actually happened in the movie, and some go beyond that. That whole abyss-staring-back-at-you lecture was pretty cool.