 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Summoning the Spirit • Year: 2023 • Country: USA • Director: Jon Garcia • Main cast: Krystal Millie Valdes, Ernesto Reyes, Jesse Tayeh, Isabelle Muthiah • Runtime: 97 minutes • Production company: Lake Productions • TRAILER
|
Imagine yourself after a long horror movie screening day, no pants, a blunt in your hand, thoughtfully conceptualizing your next project. How could you make the Midsommar (2019) experience even better in your next masterpiece? You scratch your ass and meditate on how you can optimize the already cult classic Midsommar (2019), while frowning intensely like a howler monkey. Eureka! You cry. It was always clear. A big ape and alopecia jokes. And so it was, Summoning the Spirit (2023) was born.
The movie revolves around the ups and downs of a young couple, Carla (Krystal Millie Valdes) and Dean (Ernesto Reyes), after moving into an isolated house in the forest to start a family in peace and harmony. Little do they know that in the next few minutes they will not only lose their unborn baby, but also find out about a sinister cult living in the land lot next door. As if this was not enough to tell you “run away immediately, no time to put pants on”, the first scene even shows us a couple of (correct me if I understood wrong) pyromaniac firefighters getting attacked by some tribe-like group in the same forest. Did you think the same as we did? Bingo! All elements for good fun and even more are here.
Unfortunately, the tone of the script is just unmercifully boring. The movie just goes by at the same pace this weird ape-looking guy walks: really slowly. While this can contribute to creating tension and elevating the atmosphere, it’s not the case here. On the contrary, it just makes the movie look as if it was taken way too seriously. Too many landscapes with birds singing in the background, too many slow motion scenes with cult members dancing weirdly.
This depiction of the cult might be, in fact, what bothered me the most.
Good old cults, they had so much to offer. In this one, members meditate and reject drugs, but use a beverage that might be a looks-like ayahuasca beverage, that just can’t be ayahuasca because there is no one vomiting or shitting themself. First disappointment. Some light lesbic scenes are shown as if it was a must in any proper phallocentric cult. Finally Dean and Carla’s issues because of her taking part in an orgy, although everyone was kind of dressed and sleepy. So, to sum up: no drugs, no orgies, no nakedness, and too much meditation for a cult that would have been a shame for Reverend Jim Jones. It’s just not deranged enough, I’m afraid.
What they do like are sacrifices, at least. Until the end of the movie these sacrifices are more suggested than shown, which makes sense if you wanna keep the tension alive. What director Jon Garcia did not doubt to show is this big man with a furry dress that is supposed to be BigFoot and makes taking anything else seriously barely impossible. However I must confess, at the end of the movie I really came to like his depiction, as a big horrible monster with just some maternal issues.
Ultimately the story comes to talk about the fight between human power and natural powers, between being Gods and pretending, between the great potential horrors of nature and a weird man with a slingshot, leaving BigFoot in a more than favorable sight, which really was a good hit. Unfortunately it might be the only one. Apart from a few laughters and an attractive concept, what inhabits this movie is a spirit that definitely you don’t want to summon.
RATE: 3/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt26958570
