Putting aside all the double-talk of tulpas, bridges, and Jacques Derrida, the ending of The Empty Man is relatively straight-forward-at least as far as solving the central mystery goes. After searching for Amanda (Sasha Frolova), the teenage daughter of his close friend Nora (Marin Ireland), and having a tense run-in with Arthur Parsons (Stephen Root), the chatty leader of the Scientology-esque Pontifex Institute, James, growing increasingly untethered from reality, learns that Pontifex cult members are visiting a hospital to receive messages from a patient. What happens at the end of The Empty Man? "Finding himself back in the hospital, shooting Paul, recreating the logo of the Pontifex Institute on the back wall, and then turning around and seeing the hospital staff bow down to him was always the ending from the moment I pitched it." "The overall feeling was always there," he explained.
Despite the struggle to get the movie made and in theaters, the ending was exactly what he wanted to shoot from the beginning. He was happy to talk about specific aspects of the finale, even sharing some ideas for a potential sequel, but he also clearly hopes viewers will dig back into the film and discover new layers as the movie's emerging cult continues to grow. In speaking with Prior for a separate interview about the film's production and release, I also asked him a handful of questions about the ending of the film. How did we get from from a cave in Bhutan to a hospital room where one man lies with a bullet in his head and another stands in front of potential new followers? Do all the script's different narrative threads actually connect? Who is "the empty man" exactly in this scenario?
The ideas, metaphors, and possible interpretations pile up as the mysterious goo starts to fly.īy the time Prior arrives at his unnerving final image and that haunting drone plays again on the soundtrack, it's easy to feel disoriented.
But the movie also takes on more thematic weight as it unfurls.
The plot, which follows ex-detective James Lasombra (James Badge Dale) as he investigates the mysterious disappearance of a friend's daughter, grows more complex as it progresses, revealing new elements of James' tragic backstory and the sinister nature of the Pontifex Institute. When you reach the end of The Empty Man, writer and director David Prior's cosmic-horror thriller, you feel hollowed out.