The Empty Man is coming for you in this new trailer

It seems that no matter how many urban legends about mysterious characters that will come haunt you after you say their name, watch their video, or summon them in some from, people will still keep on doing it. Which is perhaps why we have stopped caring about the deaths in horror movies as these people deserve what they get.

And it’s time to prepare for a new urban legend with the first trailer for The Empty Man which has appeared completely out of nowhere. That’s the trailer not the scary titular character. A holdover from Disney’s acquisition of Fox, The Empty Man is seemingly just being dumped into cinemas through the newly-renamed 20th Century Studios, with this very first trailer landing just a week before the movie opens. Yikes.

The upcoming film sees a group of teens messing around with the urban legend of the titular Empty Man. But what they think is just a game, ends up summoning a demonic entity that wreaks havoc on their town. Now it’s up to a former police detective (James Badge Dale) to try and save the day and bring an end to their stupidity – which we know will probably recur in an inevitable sequel anyway.

After a group of teens from a small Midwestern town begin to mysteriously disappear, the locals believe it is the work of an urban legend known as The Empty Man. As a retired cop investigates and struggles to make sense of the stories, he discovers a secretive group and their attempts to summon a horrific, mystical entity, and soon his life—and the lives of those close to him—are in grave danger.

If you were to make a drinking game out of this trailer where you took a shot of booze for every horror movie trope that you see here, you probably wouldn’t make it to the end of this short preview in one piece. So please don’t do that because we get everything here like bored teens, urban legends, formulaic supernatural appearances, grizzled former law enforcement investigating a crime no one else will, mysterious entity trying to come back to life – and that ignores all the predictable jump scares we can already see.

The Empty Man is not exactly breaking new ground here and so horror fans should not have high hopes for this one. If there is any hope I have for this David Prior written and directed movie, its that is based on a comic book series from Cullen Bunn and Vanesa R. Del Rey which promises that the movie has plenty of lore to tap into if it can only stop tapping into generic horror movie tropes in the process.  

Last Updated: October 19, 2020