|
|
Movie Review by The Gravedigger
|
07.05.05
|
Matt Busch, a commercial/pop-culture illustrator, goes to a nearby graveyard one day to find inspiration. He's not entirely happy with his successful pop-culture career and seeks something more personal. He comes across the black and white photograph of an old South American Castle sitting on one of the tombstones. He takes it back home and quickly becomes obsessed with it. He paints a portrait of the building and keeps a journal with sketches of characters he envisions live within its walls. These characters, what appear to be female spirits, are extremely creepy looking. Then, Matt starts seeing these creatures for real. One night his motion-detector alarm goes off, informing him that someone is in his studio. Yet, when he goes to check it out no one is there. What he finds instead is this strange symbol on the floor, made up of his art utensils. This design reoccurs throughout the movie and has something to do with why he's seeing these ghosts.Then, one day when he is showing his girlfriend, Sarah, his painting, they both end up IN IT, mysteriously transported to this made-up place. They check out the structure and see the weird decorations, which include everything from voodoo objects to paintings of Clint Eastwood and Ronald Reagen. Then, those nasty ghosts appear, chasing them. When Matt is down in the basement he figures that the only way to return to his own world is to complete that painting he was doing. As soon as he completes the last detail the couple find themselves back in his studio/house.But it's not over. They've brought the creatures back with them-and they wish to kill. I won't go into how they stop the monsters but it turns out to not be all that surprising if you've seen a lot of TWILIGHT ZONE episodes.Visually and technically, CONJURE is a great example of how to put together a low-budget, independent movie. Director Matt Busch, well-known for his work as an artist (book covers, album covers, STAR WARS, storyboard), wears many hats on the project. He's producer, director, editor and star of the movie, similar to how Mick McCleery of ONE BY ONE VIDEO makes his videos. But unlike McCleery, Busch shouldn't have acted in the movie for the simple fact that he isn't an actor. Granted, it takes some cajones to portray yourself in a movie but I think in this case it backfired a bit. As a result the dialogue sounds like he and Sarah are simply saying their lines, not living them. I tend to be bias against a lot of voice-over, and the voice-overs explain way too much. I also wanted more psychological depth. The whole crux of the story is that Matt is unsatisfied with his successful career as an artist and wishes to create something personal, but he seems to enjoy it a great deal. I was saying to myself, 'Huh?' There's no angst, no 'darkside' of him that presumably was responsible for those 'inner demons' haunting him. If he is unhappy, unsatisfied I think there would be some anger, some depression, some frustration, SOMETHING negative-and it isn't there. Instead, you see Matt as a very upbeat sort of guy, which he is. Performances aside, CONJURE is still worth checking out to see what good production values you can get on a digitally shot movie. Check out www.mattbusch.com and Matt's interview in the Interview section of Buried.com.
|
Rating: nan out of 10.0 - 0 votes cast total
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
