In 15 or 20 years, there’ll no doubt be a bunch of aging horror fans sitting around in the post-nuclear wasteland, firing up their e-cigs filled with pure oxygen and fondly reminiscing about an age where Don’t Breathe, V/H/S 2 or Lights Out delighted them on a random evening after flicking through the spoils of VOD. “Not like now, where you have to download the horrors directly into your frontal lobe and decide the fate of the teens yourself,” they’ll opine. Probably. Tired of CGI ghosts and jump scares? Pining for a time when John Carpenter and Stuart Gordon were churning out midnight classics? Longing for a return to the practical effects of yore? Want a little more actual body in your body horror? The Void comes gift-wrapped for you. The film’s plot is simple enough, with an Assault On Precinct 13-esque set-up. A fairly small gaggle of unfortunate souls find themselves trapped in a run-down hospital one evening, as a large cult of robe-wearing knife-wielders bear down on them from the outside and a plethora of endlessly-transforming gooey monsters try to consume them from the inside. As the body count gets higher and the stakes even more so, Gillespie and Kostanski start to wear their influences proudly. There are overt nods to The Thing, Hellraiser II, Society and Beyond The Black Rainbow (which is in itself a retro-horror that has its fingers firmly jammed in the 80s blood pie), to name but a few. There’s also more than enough surreal Neon Demon-style yonic imagery to fill a bucket, with a dominant triangle motif recurring throughout. We’re told we’re about to witness the birth of a new era in human evolution, so at least it feels like it fits into the narrative somewhat. Another question you have to ask yourself with any film that leans this heavily on the nostalgia that you can still feel lingering from better films: is there enough originality outside of its influences for it to stick in the mind long after the credits roll? The answer, in this case, is yes. Just. The Void isn’t up there with other, more worthy slam-dunk horrors like It Follows, Train To Busan or The Babadook, but it’s still fun as hell, and maybe that’s just what you need right now… The Void is released in UK cinemas on 31st March