Conjurer (2008)
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
I reviewed a movie a few weeks back called Deadwood Park (read review) In it, I wondered why the hell the two leads were so quick to acquiesce to the fact that there were ghosts about. But today’s movie, Conjurer, is almost making me rethink my stance. It’s kind of weird that we as a people have grown both smarter and more naïve simultaneously, isn’t it? If you and your wife moved into a house that was haunted and you saw ghosts, you’d tell her right? But would she believe you? So already our moviegoing impulses and our regular, garden variety common sense are at odds.
This all means if you actually make a haunted house movie in this day age, you’re going to have to face the temptations to do away with cliché in order to be progressive. But that’s easier said than done, because that uncovers another nest of problems. Sad to say, but I think we need to declare an immediate and permanent moratorium on the haunted house picture. Or at the very least the sub-subgenre where the happy couple moves into one and stays there beyond common sense and self-preservation. Know why 1408 (read review) worked? Because Cusack couldn’t leave.
But Conjurer at least makes a valiant attempt. Were movies men and had deaths like all of us, the epitaph on this film’s tombstone would be…
“It tried, bless its heart.”
MAD TV vet Andrew Bowen plays Shawn, a big city photographer married to Helen (Maxin Bahns), who is pregnant. After she miscarries, Helen’s brother (John Schneider of Dukes of Hazzard and Smallville) decides it would be a good idea for the two of them to move out to the country. So he sells Helen and Shawn a nice rural house with a cabin in the back. No points for guessing what’s been hanging around the cabin since the Civil War. Shrieking, creaking doors, the whole thing.
The back of the DVD case that was mailed to me says that “As fragile Helen recovers from her grief and once again becomes pregnant, Shawn keeps the strange occurrences to himself to avoid disrupting her emotional balance.”
I respectfully disagree. Shawn keeps the strange occurrences to himself because he is rock-fuckin’-stupid.
I’m not gonna be too hard on this movie, because it really is pleasant enough. The acting is good, being as this flick features actors I’ve, y’know, heard of. It is quite well shot, using its rural setting to its best advantage and they even had the wherewithal to shoot in scope. Just when I thought these straight-to-video horror-steamers had resigned themselves to being the pieces of shit they usually are, here comes one that aims higher, which is rare in and of itself to warrant compliment.
And Maxine Bahns sure is purdy…
But the script does need work. I don’t trust that DVD case because I truly believe that Shawn is, in fact, dumber than a bag of hammers. How well is Helen’s “emotional balance” gonna hold up when THE FUCKING GHOSTS GET HERE?
He even gets photographic evidence—PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE!—that yes, there are ghosts on the property and he keeps this to himself. I mean, bottom line common sense dictates that you would tell your wife about this. Not even in a self-preservation scenario, but as a lovely little dinner anecdote. “Oh look, honey, I took a picture of a ghost.”
I mean if you took a picture of a ghost, would you keep it to yourself? I myself would call the Sci-Fi Channel. I’d get on that one show and I’d auction the picture off. He IS a photographer after all.
And we get all the rote, dinky clichés, like possessed animals, the family pet that senses it, the fire that lights by itself, the crazy-ass dreams, all of it. My particular favorite is “the vanishing living room set,” wherein the hero is invited into the ghosts lair decked out with all the ghostly goodies like creaking rocking chairs and whatnot. Then, when asked for evidence, he takes whoever is asking back to the lair and sure enough, the ghost and her living room set have vanished. “But… But it was here last night.”
I’m not saying that Conjurer is a bad movie. I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend it, but I’m not saying that there’s no one on Earth who wouldn’t. If you absolutely HAVE to have another Haunted-Yuppie-Real-Estate movie, you could do worse. It just just does nothing new and fades from the mind easily…
Very easily…
What was I talking about?
Visit Conjurer’s Official Site
Watch the trailer for Conjurer:
Popularity: 24% [?]
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