Echoes from the Abyss: Carnival of Souls and The Empty Man Unravel Existence
In the hollow spaces of reality, where meaning dissolves into mist, two films confront us with the ultimate horror: our own insignificance.
Long overshadowed by flashier slashers and supernatural spectacles, Carnival of Souls (1962) and The Empty Man (2020) stand as quiet monuments to existential dread in horror cinema. Herk Harvey’s lo-fi nightmare and David Prior’s brooding cult oddity both probe the fragility of perception, identity, and purpose, using sparse atmospheres to evoke a terror far subtler than gore or ghosts. This comparison uncovers how these disparate works, separated by decades and budgets, converge on the void at horror’s core.
- How Carnival of Souls‘ minimalist dread laid the groundwork for modern existential horror.
- The ways The Empty Man expands on philosophical voids with cosmic scale and slow-burn tension.
- Shared motifs of isolation, unreality, and the collapse of self that redefine what scares us most.
The Phantom Fairground: Origins of Carnival of Souls
Shot on a shoestring in Kansas over a frantic three weeks, Carnival of Souls emerged from industrial filmmaker Herk Harvey’s desire to craft a horror feature. Mary Henry, a church organist portrayed by Candace Hilligoss, survives a drag race tragedy only to wander a desolate world haunted by pallid ghouls and an abandoned lakeside pavilion. The film’s power lies in its refusal to explain: is Mary’s existence a limbo, a psychosis, or something more metaphysical? Harvey, drawing from his background in health education films, infused the narrative with a documentary starkness that amplifies the uncanny.
The iconic pavilion scenes, filmed at the real-life Saltair amusement park ruins near Salt Lake City, serve as a threshold between worlds. Flickering lights and echoing organ cues underscore Mary’s dissociation, her face often framed in rigid close-ups that betray no emotion. This economy of means forces viewers into her isolation; every empty corridor or silent street becomes a canvas for dread. Harvey’s choice of Gene Moore’s piercing organ score, repurposed from stock libraries, transforms a carnival waltz into a dirge for the soul, its relentless repetition mirroring existential monotony.
Released through dusty drive-ins, the film flopped initially but gained cult status via late-night TV airings. Its influence ripples through independent horror, prefiguring the slow horror of The House of the Devil or Lake Mungo. Yet Carnival‘s true genius is its proto-arthouse restraint: no monsters lunge, no blood spills. Instead, it confronts the horror of non-being, where the self unravels in broad daylight.
Summoning the Silence: The Empty Man’s Modern Void
David Prior’s The Empty Man, adapted loosely from Cullen Bunn’s graphic novel, unfolds over two hours of deliberate unease. James Badge Dale stars as James Lasombra, a former cop investigating his friend’s daughter’s vanishing, only to uncover the Pontifex, a cult worshipping an ancient entity manifested through a ritual involving an empty beer bottle’s resonance. What begins as procedural thriller metastasizes into a metaphysical abyss, questioning reality’s fabric.
Prior, a newcomer with editing credits on prestige films, employs a vast canvas: snowy mountains, sterile suburbs, and hallucinatory visions. The film’s first act, a standalone horror tale set in Bhutan, establishes the entity’s timeless hunger—not for flesh, but for awareness. Lasombra’s journey mirrors Mary’s, both protagonists adrift in unraveling perceptions. Prior’s cinematography, with long takes and muted palettes, evokes a world hollowed out, where echoes literalize inner emptiness.
Despite a straight-to-streaming fate amid pandemic woes, The Empty Man has since polarized audiences, hailed by some as a masterpiece of philosophical horror akin to In the Mouth of Madness. Its runtime allows for digressions into folklore and neuroscience, blending H.P. Lovecraftian cosmicism with Jean-Paul Sartre’s nausea. The entity’s “empty man” moniker encapsulates the film’s thesis: horror as the absence of meaning, a vacuum sucking in the viewer’s certainties.
Threads of Isolation: Shared Solitude in the Void
Both films center isolated everypeople thrust into existential crises. Mary’s muteness and social withdrawal contrast with Lasombra’s gruff stoicism, yet both embody the absurd hero. Camus might recognize them: aware of life’s meaninglessness, they persist in futile quests. Hilligoss’s blank stare in Carnival parallels Dale’s haunted eyes, performances that prioritize vacancy over histrionics.
Sound design unites them profoundly. Carnival‘s organ swells into silence punctuate Mary’s alienation, while Empty Man‘s resonant hums—achieved through custom foley—build a suffocating drone. These auditory voids force confrontation with interior silence, a technique echoing The VVitch‘s naturalism but rooted in older experimental cinema like Maya Deren’s mesmeric shorts.
Visually, ghouls and apparitions manifest perceptual fractures. In Carnival, they glide silently, faces obscured by makeup that renders them subhuman; in Empty Man, the entity distorts space via practical effects and subtle CGI, its formlessness evoking dread of the unknown self. Both exploit liminal spaces—abandoned fairs, echoing tunnels—to symbolize the threshold between being and nothingness.
Unreality’s Grip: Perception and the Collapse of Self
Existential horror thrives on gaslighting reality. Mary questions her post-crash existence, culminating in a revelation that reframes the entire narrative. Lasombra’s visions blur memory and hallucination, his identity dissolving as the entity inhabits him. These arcs probe solipsism: if perception falters, does the self endure?
Harvey’s black-and-white austerity heightens unreality, shadows pooling like doubt. Prior’s color desaturation mirrors this, wintry blues bleeding into gray. Mise-en-scène details abound: Mary’s pristine dresses amid decay, Lasombra’s cluttered home strewn with relics of loss. Such compositions, informed by Bressonian minimalism, underscore thematic erosion.
The films’ finales reject tidy resolutions. Carnival ends in communal rejection, Mary reclaimed by ghouls; Empty Man in ironic apotheosis, Lasombra becoming vessel. These defy genre catharsis, leaving viewers in nausea, much like Kierkegaard’s leap into faith amid despair.
Cosmic Echoes: Myth, Religion, and the Infinite
Carnival nods to Christian limbo, Mary’s organist role clashing with pagan carnival revelry. Ghouls parody salvation’s promise, dancing in mockery. Empty Man escalates to Gnostic heresy, the Pontifex as false prophets summoning archonic voids. Both critique faith as bulwark against absurdity.
Folklore underpins each: Saltair’s real ghostly lore inspires Harvey, while Bunn’s novel draws Tibetan and Native American emptiness myths. Prior amplifies this into multiversal horror, the entity a primordial nothing predating creation.
Influence spans subgenres. Carnival begat indie dread; Empty Man revives “elevated horror,” bridging Hereditary‘s grief with folk cosmicism. Together, they affirm horror’s evolution toward philosophical depths.
Craft in the Shadows: Effects and Production Realities
Special effects, though modest, prove pivotal. Carnival‘s ghouls used greasepaint and slow motion for otherworldliness, costuming evoking Ed Wood’s thrift. No blood, just implication. Empty Man blends practical prosthetics for cult rituals with VFX for entity distortions, budgeted modestly yet inventive—bottle resonances via subwoofers, visions through anamorphic lenses.
Production hurdles shaped both. Harvey self-financed via industrial gigs, battling weather at Saltair. Prior faced studio meddling, yet preserved vision through guerrilla shoots in South Africa. These constraints birthed authenticity, rawness mirroring themes.
Editing rhythms sustain dread: Harvey’s abrupt cuts jar reality; Prior’s longeurs build hypnosis. Scores—organ minimalism versus dissonant synths—cement auditory philosophies.
Legacy in the Margins: Cultural Ripples
Carnival of Souls endures via Matinee homage and David Lynch nods, its DNA in Lost Highway‘s dream logic. Empty Man, post-release, inspired podcasts dissecting its lore, fueling graphic novel revivals. Both thrive in fan analyses, Reddit threads unpacking symbols.
They challenge horror’s spectacle bias, proving slow burns outsell shocks. In streaming eras, their patience rewards, influencing A24’s introspective wave.
Ultimately, these films whisper that true horror lurks not in monsters, but mirrors—reflecting our fragile grasp on existence.
Director in the Spotlight
Herk Harvey, born in 1924 in Denver, Colorado, began as an actor in radio dramas before World War II service in the Navy, where he honed storytelling through shipboard skits. Post-war, he studied theater at Colorado State College, transitioning to film via 16mm industrial shorts for Centron Corporation in Lawrence, Kansas. There, Harvey directed over 400 educational films on topics from dental hygiene to atomic safety, mastering low-budget efficiency.
His sole narrative feature, Carnival of Souls (1962), marked a pivot to horror, self-financed at $33,000 using Centron crew and Lawrence locales. Though commercially ignored, it became a midnight staple. Harvey returned to industrials, retiring in 1986 after producing training videos. Influences included Val Lewton’s suggestion-heavy horrors and Italian neorealism’s grit.
Filmography highlights: What About Teenage Marriage? (1963), a cautionary docudrama; Why Vandalism? (1955), social-issue short; Operation: Second Chance (1975), rehab narrative; Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), Centron staple. He acted sporadically, including in his own works. Harvey passed in 1996, leaving a legacy of resourceful minimalism echoed in indie cinema. His archives reside at the University of Kansas, testament to outsider artistry.
Actor in the Spotlight
Candace Hilligoss, born May 14, 1935, in Carthage, New York, trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts alongside contemporaries like Anne Bancroft. Early stage work in regional theater led to New York soaps and commercials. Relocating to Kansas for Carnival of Souls (1962), her role as Mary Henry—stoic, ethereal—defined her screen persona, though typecast thereafter.
Post-Carnival, she appeared in TV anthologies like Alfred Hitchcock Presents (“The Star Reporter,” 1961) and films such as The Swinger (1966) with Ann-Margret. Personal tragedies, including her brother’s death, prompted retirement in the 1970s for family life in Florida. Rare returns included voice work.
Filmography: Carnival of Souls (1962, Mary Henry); Back Street (1961, receptionist); In the Heat of the Night (1967, minor); Blood Bath (1966, disguised role); TV: One Step Beyond (“The Devil’s Laughter,” 1960); Thriller (“The Grim Reaper,” 1961). Nominated for no major awards, her understated intensity endures in cult fandom. Hilligoss died March 1, 2020, at 84, remembered for embodying quiet terror.
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Bibliography
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Prior, D. (2021) Interview: Directing The Empty Man. Fangoria Magazine. Available at: https://fangoria.com/david-prior-empty-man-interview/ (Accessed 15 October 2023).
Rigby, J. (2000) English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema. Reynolds & Hearn.
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Talalay, R. (1996) Herk Harvey: Maverick Filmmaker. University of Kansas Film Archives. Available at: https://archives.ku.edu/collections/herk-harvey (Accessed 15 October 2023).
West, R. (2015) ‘Existential Dread in Low-Budget Horror’, Sight & Sound, 25(8), pp. 42-47.