Conjure (2006) — Triskaidekafiles

CONJURE

WRITER: Matt Busch

DIRECTOR: Matt Busch

STARRING: Matt Busch as Matt Busch

Sarah Wilkinson as Sarah Wilkinson

Angela Jackman as Alegna

Alexis Sharon as Ixel

Hillary Aguanno as Onoga

QUICK CUT: A day in the life of illustrator Matt Busch

THE MORGUE

Matt - An artist who has done a lot of genre work, and become disillusioned with life, but because he’s interested in the supernatural, he is seeking experiences outside of the norm to give him a thrill and feel something again.

Sarah - Matt’s girlfriend, a model, a frequent subject of his art, and far less interested in being pulled along his journey into the supernatural.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! This week's movie came to my attention when someone called it one of the worst movies they've seen. And so here I am, challenge accepted, because that always piques my curiosity, and I am rarely satisfied. And then. And then there's Conjure. Let's dive into this.

The movie opens up with some decent, if decidedly no budget, scares as some people creep around a house with creepy monsters coming after them. It sets up things, teases what's to come, and then it needle scratches to do a whole, "Well how did we get here?" moment.

And that's fine! In media res is a time honoured storytelling tool! But this movie, THIS MOVIE, goes back to fill in this dude's *entire life story* from when he was a child, and it tells his entire career from age 9 to today, in a nearly *ten minute long sequence*.

This is the very definition of self indulgence. It is WILDLY unnecessary. It really comes off as a press kit for writer, director, and star, Matt Busch. Oh yeah, he's playing a fictionalised version of himself, too. It is just SO egregious and over long. OH and also he provides musics for the movie.

But once all that is over and done with, we learn that Matt is in a bit of a rut, he's lost that spark, and he has turned to more darker pursuits, looking for some sort of excitement. He goes for a walk and finds a photograph of a weird house, as he passes through a cemetery. Ah yes. What is your pleasure, sir? Architectural photography.

Whoa, I didn’t know these things could dispense photos!!

So he heads home, the art bug having crawled back into him, and he tells his girlfriend Sarah that he is gonna make a painting of the house.

The dialogue is all very basic, the wandering around is pretty standard, it's all very "just doing stuff and filming it" kinda vibes so far. It feels very meandering.

You are LUCKY I am skimming past the bulk of this, because we do not need to hear what book Sarah is chilling and reading in the living room.

So we watch as Matt paints the house, and he really takes "write what you know" to heart here. But finally weird shit starts to happen, as Sarah tries getting a drink, and the water bottle and glasses keep moving on her. But hey, we've all had moments like that, so she just brushes it aside. For now.

The glasses are trying to escape the movie. Run! Run little glasses, save yourselves!

Eventually, Matt reaches up to grab a sketch book, and he quickly flips through images he's drawn, some of them looking like pages straight out of the Necronomicon's cousin.

And, to be quite frank, all these symbols and scribblings and monsters…really mean nothing to anyone right now. It WANTS them to be important, but...nah.

The only thing of note, which Matt never seems to notice or even comment on, is that he HAS ALREADY DRAWN THE HOUSE HE JUST FOUND A PHOTO OF. That feels like it would be noteworthy??

Well, I sure hope the painting was dry before you set that down.

Night comes and the couple gets some sleep, and we get MORE self indulgent flashbacks to an interviewer talking about Matt's illustrious illustrative career. And look, my dude, pick one or the other. Dream flashbacks or the 10 minute long sizzle reel. Using both are redundant, and a lot of this dream sequence gets the necessary information across. And is much shorter.

There is an interesting notion about how Matt is looking for an experience where he can't distinguish between reality and fantasy, and it's a thread they really needed to run with. Make this a low budget DIY Hellraiser.

Matt and Sarah get woken up by a noise, and after a reassuring, in depth description of how alarm systems work, they start to drift back off to sleep...until the alarm shows movement in the basement!

That cabinet will never threaten anyone again!

We watch as numbers on the alarm console turn on, indicating movement, while Matt wanders through the house, and uh...

Oh my god, there's something in the house, it's moving all around, quick, cut back to Matt, moving through the house, looking all around!!

But as these things go, Matt discovers nothing, save for his art supplies arranged in a weird symbol that's popped up a few times during the movie.

The next day, or whenever, Sarah is setting up some stuff for lunch, and it falls to the ground. When she turns around, it too has arranged itself in the strange symbol. When she tries to show Matt, everything is back the way it should be.

Baffled, the couple heads down to Matt's studio, and they can hear and feel a strange noise. And I spit my coffee out when Matt just goes, "Eh! Probably the furnace!"

It is most assuredly NOT the furnace though, as things get wobbly, and we get a montage of scenes from the past thirty minutes, and some things yet to come.

And that's when the painting rises off the art table, attacks the camera, and Matt and Sarah sit up from the front lawn, finding themselves transported to wherever the house is.

Even the painting wants out of the movie.

With little other choice in the way of ideas, they decide to check out the house, and see if they have a phone so they can figure something out.

Inside the house, they find all kinds of manner of collected junk. Paintings of presidents and actors, tarot card pillows, cow skulls, shackles...this is the worst AirBNB ever.

The whole setup is weird, or overly forced, depending on how you want to look at things, and how charitable you’re feeling.

Motherface! I knew you were the one behind this!!

After coming across a spider, Sarah decides she is outties, and leaves, while Matt stays behind and explores some more.

Matt heads into the basement, discovering such shocking items as paint cans, and a water heater. And when he finds the symbol, once again drawn upon the wall, he remarks with the most unimpressed reaction of the dull surprise filled "wow".

This movie sure does like to look around a lot. I predict we are gonna get 30 minutes of setup in the real world, 30 minutes of wandering the house, and 30 minutes of actual plot.

Outside, Sarah gets all of five feet away from the house before the trees start laughing at her, and they probably can't show anything because they are probably right next to a street in a neighbourhood.

She rushes back to the house, and before she can find Matt, there's a weird rustling coming from a trunk in the corner.

Matt shows up, and they look in the box, finding a woman loosely draped in cloth. Sarah is now more eager to get out and Matt's response is, "Nah, it's fine, let's go check out the cellar!" Said no survivor of a horror movie ever.

Downstairs, they find another art studio, and another painting of the house, and Sarah puts two and two together, somehow equaling, "Did you manifest this place??" and again, there is a fascinating idea about artists and creation, that never fully gels.

Matt talks Sarah into stay, because despite the fact that there's no phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury, surely SOMEone must be coming home soon that can help!

Dude. Buddy. Pal. You ended up here by being sucked into a flying painting. The laws of common sense and what should happen, no longer apply.

But to kill time until someone arrives, the couple decides to...take a nap. What did I just say in the last review? And many times before? Your horror movie should never have enough quiet downtime for characters to comfortably take a nap. They are not suitably scared, and neither is the audience.

Sometime during the night, they get woken up from voices behind an odd door, and even Matt is like yeah okay, we can go now. But now the front door has locked them in, as has every other door.

Matt heads down to the cellar to find his flashlight, and Sarah does...more looking around. Jesus.

The upside of all this is that we start seeing spectral women floating around threatening Sarah when she's not looking, and Matt sees a message saying "Finish it" scrawled in *ahem* blood.

Matt tells Sarah about the message, and SHE immediately comes to the conclusion, "The painting!" The fact that the artist, working on a piece of art, one he has yet to finish, that sucked them into it, and showed them ANOTHER piece of art...says a LOT about his character.

So they decide to finish the painting in the basement, and oh good, more random bullshit montage to pad this movie out even more.

But Matt finishes up, declares he is done and...they are suddenly back in his art studio, back at their house.

How can we be home? There’s still 30 minutes left!!

Seriously, I’m not joking, are back in the real world, and a third of the movie still to go. Where are we going with this??

It's not long before the pair realise they both are now marked on their arms with the same strange symbol that actually has no meaning beyond "Hey it's a strange symbol!". Fun fact, these are actual tattoos Matt and his actual girlfriend, who is playing the role of herself naturally, got in real life. Funner fact, they broke up, and now have this matching symbol etched into their flesh forever.

There are so many moments in this movie of these two looking around, dumbfounded, and asking, gosh what is going on?? And if only there was more than two whole characters in this movie for the last hour, we could have maybe had some lore infodumps for them AND the audience.

Finally we learn that whatever they did unlocked something, and the spirits from the painting, and Matt's sketchbook, are appearing in reality and spooking our heroes.

Hello! We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s insurance!

We've more or less caught up with the start of the film, answering the "How did I get here?" questions, and the movie doesn't do much else besides run around the house chased by spirits.

Eventually Sarah gets possessed by one of the spirits, and she does a decent job of shifting her attitude from loving Sarah to possessed stabby ghost.

Matt also realises all these apparitions are from his sketchbook FINALLY and he goes to try and get past all the ghosts to get it, and burn the pages.

I mean, he doesn't know that will stop anything, but at least it's a plan.

Fortunately, his random idea works, and as the pages burn, the spirits go up in a glowing ball of flame as well. But possessed Sarah shows up to stab him before he can finish the job.

He tries to fling the last page into the fire, but it keeps flying out at him, thanks to hot air and light paper. Come on, fold it into a paper airplane! Do it! Paper airplane!!

So the fight continues until he finally crumples up the page into an origami boulder, and he chucks it into the fire, freeing Sarah.

But, oops, Matt dropped one page downstairs, so he has the last monster chase Sarah, while he runs to get it, and burn it.

Instead of ending the movie here though, the movie gets even MORE self indulgent, by having Matt and Sarah go on vacation to NYC, and show us their home movies, and more stuff about their careers. Why is it ending like this??

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s really not great. It’s fine, but everything is so washed out, it looks like a VHS at times.

Audio: Also not great. Often it sounds like a room mic.

Sound Bite: “I'm afriad I have to stab you now"

Body Count: Well this is not quite a first, but close. Not a single person was killed that day.

Blood Type - C: The creatures look decent enough for this sorta thing, and there’s a few splats of blood.

Drink Up! Every time they wander around looking at things.

Movie Review: So. You’re probably thinking this is a done deal. I dunked on this movie a lot, constantly calling it a self indulgent flick. And that is not wrong. BUT. If you set aside the opening hype fest, I actually don’t think the ideas here are bad. There are genuinely good ideas in the foundation here. An artist who has become bored, lost that spark, who wants to dive into new, strange, dark experiences? Being transported through a mystical object, and encountering weird shit, granting your wish? There is a good idea there! Like I joked, make it a Hellraiser movie! Or Hellraiser adjacent. But this is…this is Conjure. This is a lotta wandering around, it’s a two people show, and they just can’t quite carry the idea off. It really has that air of “I want to make a movie and I can use it to push my brand!” feeling about it, and there is so little done with interesting ideas, this is only a two out of five haunted photographs.

Entertainment Value: There isn’t much entertainment to be had either, which would have at least been something. If it was gonna be this self indulgent and hyping Matt Busch, some over the top ridiculousness would’ve been nice. You get a PINCH of that with the ghosts, and Sarah DOES do a great shrieking monster. In fact, the acting is fairly okay. It could be better, but I’ve seen MUCH worse. If you skip the opening ten minutes, which wears down a LOT of my good will almost instantly, it could at least be a goofy DIY movie, but I am just not here for it, once the actual thing stars. One out of five convention appearances.