Knowing a certain amount about a movie, its maker, and the process of its making will invariably color the tone and level of your perception of that particular film.
That being said, Conjure is a terrible movie and Matt Busch is a terrible director. This should not take away from Busch's incredible talent for art in any way; it's just a statement of fact about the content, quality, and decision-making of Conjure's construction.
The film, shot on video, is obviously a handmade production, lovingly constructed by Busch, but it comes across as dull, amateurish, and slapdash.
The film begins with a 9 minute intro that serves as nothing more than a bio reel for Matt Busch, who casts himself as the main character of the film, an easy enough part to play, but the backstory delving into his entire life, his dreams, motivations, and career path are easily the most self-indulgent thing I've ever seen on film. What could have easily been established through context clues or a short piece of voiceover is instead buried in 9 extra minutes of information totally unrelated to the film's plot.
When the proceedings finally do get underway, we're left to trudge through an awkward beginning, as shaky and unnatural dialogue and plot points spill out onto the screen to sit for nearly a half hour as our protagonists, Matt and his girlfriend Sarah, sit around the house after ghostly happenings begin in their home, including the moving of objects and the setting off of burglar alarms, all seemingly faciliated by Matt's finding of the picture of a "castle" (a large house in no way resembling a castle) while trudging through a snowy graveyard.
After some ghostly happenings (and a collage of footage), Matt and Sarah are pulled into his painting of the "castle," where they investigate, see more ghostly images, and eventually work their way back to their house somehow to experience encounters with ghostly women from Matt's art who harass them before finally being dispelled at the film's end. It then, of course, features another epilogue that continues the stream of biographical self-indulgence.
Sadly, my description, though short, is easily one hundred times more interesting than the actual film.
The great faults of the movie begin first and foremost with an almost laughable, uninteresting, and paltry plot, barely held together by its threads of development. This is compounded by the stiff and unnatural dialogue and the rough acting skills of Busch, though his acting is Shakespearian in comparison to then-girlfriend Sarah Wilkinson, who delivers every line with a detached tone that leaves you to wonder how she can play herself so badly.
The movie lacks any sense of atmosphere, though it's hard to blame Busch given the financial and technical limitations given to him, but there's many, many ways these problems could have been worked around but were not. The "castle" for example is decorated in a mix of weird truck stop knick-knacks and items whose humorous nature totally undercuts any tone the film might try to build. Busch also would have done well to avoid shooting so much in the bright sunlight of day, making all the more atmospheric parts of the movie filmed at night look bad in comparison.
The direction and choice of shots isn't terrible and Matt draws some interesting material out of the ether, but the editing is an abomination and already dully-written scenes stretch on in silence towards infinity, the cut coming minutes too late to save the film's movement. The moments that should be frightening often linger so long on screen that any magic they could have possessed becomes entirely laughable and interesting design is wasted, not to mention the dozens and dozens of jump cuts to second-long shots of crazy shit with blasts of noise that serve only to be weird.
The use of ghostly figures transposed onto the shots is actually fairly clever and the way in which these "ghosts" are used is actual decent for such a lo-fi, low-budget production, but the plot services none of this in any way and the whole movie is pure shoeleather, wasting time until it fills feature length. Also, though it was overdriven as hell and irritated my receiver, the sound design for the movie is fairly well constructed and uses some very nice cues and scoring on top of the crazy ambient noises. Kudos to him on that note.
If I could tell Mr. Busch one thing, it would be to come up with a tighter, more easily accomplished concept to set his sights on, if ever he were to make a film again, though I would advise him to stick to art, conceptual design, or production and leave the work of direction, editing and acting to the semi-professionals.
Of course, if I were offered a chance to tell him two things I'd say that, no matter how hot Miss Wilkinson is (and she is a very cute girl), some people just can't act and shouldn't be put in front of a camera. The right tool for the right job, Mr. Busch.
