"There is only the great, binding nothingness of things."

Despite the time Prior's spent on supplemental, behind the scenes home video duties for Fincher over the years, this beguilingly marches to the beat of its own drum thanks to sustained dread and a firm disregard for cheap thrills. Just the title and skeletal plot description alone are enough to evoke painful memories of similarly plotted, Creepypasta-adjacent schlock of the 2010s however this lays the foreboding on thick with secretive doomsday cult nihilism cut with dismal cosmic horrors that gradually consume Dale's tortured ex-cop archetype. There are a couple of throwaway gag lines but this is foremost a decidedly plodding slab of dourness that's so embroiled in how complex and far-reaching its mythos is that it has no choice but to shoot itself in the foot with a borderline incomprehensible whirlwind of a conclusive stretch.