‘The Empty Man’ Ending Explained: Go Ahead, Manifest My Tulpa

What follows is a bucketload of spoilers regarding the ending of The Empty Man, a 2020 horror movie that recently landed on HBO and HBO Max. Just how empty is he, and who made him like that? Read on for answers.

The Empty Man, written and directed by David Prior from comic book source material of the same name, was filmed in 2017, then shelved by the studio until 2020, when its theatrical release smack dab in the middle of the global pandemic caught on with exactly no one. But it’s built a respectable cult following since resurfacing on home media, which is interesting because in The Empty Man, James Badge Dale is following a cult. But what else is going on in this queasy, slow-burn horror outing?

WHAT IS THE PLOT OF THE EMPTY MAN?

Badge Dale is James, a brooding loner and former cop whose humdrum existence as a security expert in 2018 Missouri is thrown asunder when he investigates the disappearance of a local teen and discovers the worship of a supernatural entity and a mysterious cult with mystical intentions. But before any of that happens, The Empty Man spends its initial half-hour of run time in the mountains of Bhutan, where in 1995, four backpackers freak out when one of their number, Paul (Aaron Poole), suddenly disappears into a crevasse. He’s discovered there, chanting and mumbling mortal warnings while humming into a ritualistic pipe, and before long his friends all meet a violent end. 

Back in 2018 Missouri, James follows the missing girl’s bloody scrawl of “The Empty Man made me do it” to a group of her friends. They worship this “Empty Man,” see, summoning him by blowing into bottles while standing on a bridge. On the first day, they hear him; on the second, they see him; and on the third day, he finds them. (The echoes of Candyman are real, and you should listen to them.) But after all of that, all James finds are the teens’ hanging bodies. He also infiltrates The Pontifex Institute, a shady group full of eerily cheery Kool-Aid drinkers. Arthur Parsons (the always welcome Stephen Root) is their leader, and he lets fly a deliciously cryptic spew of Empty Man argle-bargle in James’s general direction. Between the dead teens, the psalmic verses of Pontifex (“Until a civilization has fallen it has not yet served its purpose”), and a decrepit summer camp in the woods, where he discovers files on the teens, Paul from the Bhutan expedition, and to his dismay, his own damn self, James is starting to go a little bonkers, and he takes drastic measures in a desperate gambit to salvage some reality.

WHAT IS THE EMPTY MAN ENDING EXPLAINED?

That reality James is trying to salvage? It doesn’t happen. Because as it turns out, his reality never was. Wait, what? Well, after the events at the summer camp, where James found the files and witnessed hundreds of Pontifex members worshipping a Wicker Man-esque effigy, he abducts a cult member, who tells him about an individual in a St. Louis hospital room who serves as a kind of transmitter for messages from the Empty Man. James goes to the hospital, and finds that the transmitter is Paul, the Bhutan backpacker. Cult members genuflect before his comatose body, and explain that Paul’s physical form is weakening from its longtime harboring of the Empty Man’s freaky essence. They need a new body to keep the lines of metaphysical communication open, and that’s where James comes in. He’s not James at all but a tulpa, the physical manifestation of the Pontifex cult’s mental and spiritual calisthenics. He didn’t exist before this; his memories are a construct. His body is but a vessel, custom-built to be the Empty Man’s new home. Thus revealed, James kills Paul, and the cult members bow to their new transmitter. 

A horror film with the courage to probe the metaphysical realm for larger questions about human existence and the veil between form and flesh, The Empty Man is well on its way to achieving cult following status. It’s probably a good idea to send your SASE and $3.95 to the Pontifex Institute now so you can receive their informational packet and get on board.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch The Empty Man on HBO Max