The Resurrectionist

This is a unique vision. If you like weird atmosphere, dark westerns, Lovecraft and indie movies, this is for you. It evoked Eraserhead mashed with Track of the Cat, Cool AIr and some kind of odd antique found footage.

The look and feel seemed very intentional: dialog does not line up with the video, wooden "western" acting superimposed with good acting..stills based on old tin-types. Transports you into a world way far away from studio films.

Kudos to the Make up department. That stitched together bloated giant man gave me nightmares for a week just from the look of him. It really stuck with me. That is the sign of great monster effects.

If you are looking for something gritty, unconventional and relatively obscure. This is better than any of the dull, predictable, cliche and way too clean non-studio horror movies that pollute the video market.

Let me start by saying that this film is visually stunning. The camera work evokes stark, black and white images with a very dream-like world. The props provided by Catalyst Studios are, as one would suspect, top notch (for those unaware and living in a cave hiding from the Great Old Ones, Catalyst Studios is responsible for the cover of the d20 Cthulhu book). Make up? Wonderful. The look of the mail character, Ezekiel Sutter? Top notch.

Sadly, the soundtrack for this film was recorded separately. Given the strange feel of the film, I actually didn't mind the dialog not matching up to the screen. What I did mind was the lackluster performance given by many of the actors while doing their voicework. An example would be Sebastian DeLaOsa's abominable performance as the Marshal. With no real emotion or passion to what he is saying, the viewer gets the feeling that he is simply reading lines from a script. Of course, there are exceptions and I would be remiss in pointing out the wonderful performance of Michael Graves in the title role.

The story itself is an original tale set in " A west that never was, and will be again". While the movie is well-paced it never manages to get beyond eerie, though I suspect it was trying desperately hard to do so. While there are some odd things about the movie (why does the main character walk everywhere?) overall it is entertaining. Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, the story seems a bit rushed, and the tale could have done with a longer treatment.

As for Lovecraftian references? They are fairly subtle. Indeed the most obvious is on the DVD case, a mention of the "Tattered King". That is okay though, this film seeks to evoke atmosphere rather than screams, and in that it does fairly well.

There are some interesting extras on the DVD. Oddly enough, the interviews are the most disappointing. Obviously done in one take, there are times where it is almost impossible to hear what is being said due to planes flying over head. Those sequences should have been reshot, but never were. However, as extras go, the collections of photos are by far my favorite and there are some really great pictures included on the DVD.

I wanted to like this movie. I really did. The concept is wonderful, and could have been a brilliant movie.

Alas, the execution left a little to be desired. The script really needed to be a bit more worked on; it was confusing as hell and I still don't really know what happened after watching it the second time through. The editing... well, I suspect that the movie that was originally shot was so heart-wrenchingly plagued by camera problems that they had to completely rewrite something from the footage that survived, and needed to record new dialog that doesn't even pretend to match what the actors are obviously saying. Characters appear, a point is made about their mysterious background and are never seen again, and the climax ending of the movie lust left me saying WTF just happened?

The images on the DVD aren't stunning. The lighting is sub-par, though I suspect that this is more from the one-light transfer from film (8mm) to video-- it looks as if somebody pointed a projector at a screen and shot the screen with a video camera-- which leaves most of the images muddy and incomprehensible. Add to that the film registration issues (i.e. broken camera)-- some of which were left in to make the film look "arty"-- and it ends up bad enough to make Ed Wood cry.

The best part of the DVD are the extra features with cast and crew interviews. It's really obvious that the cast and crew aren't professional at all, but a group of folks who decided to get together and make a movie, which is awesome: I love when a crew of people get together with the passion to make a movie because they love it.

I just wish that they had taken some time to actually learn how to make a movie first.