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Jezizup [Film Festival 07.14.10] movie review scifi drama

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Year: 2010
Directors: Matt Osterman
Writers: Matt Osterman
IMDB: link
Trailer: link
Review by: Jezizup
Rating: 2 out of 10

I wish I could give this film a higher rating. When I saw the trailer, I was excited to see it. I read that it was comparable to Primer and, one of my all-time favorites, Solaris. It isn’t. And that is two hours of my life that I will never get back.


The premise is pretty awesome: Cody (played by Freddy Rodriguez look-alike Sasha Andreev) takes care of his younger brother after both parents die in a tragic car accident. He is wracked by guilt and willing to do anything to see his parents again. Although he dropped out of high school after his parents died, he has considerable mechanical and technological expertise which he uses to build a machine in his garage to bring the dead back to life. He believes if he can reach the right electromagnetic frequency, ghosts will become visible in this plane of existence: “If the other side exists, why shouldn’t the laws of physics apply to it?” Cody powers his machine using a pair of grid tie inverter boxes to convert solar energy to AC power. The machine works by taking standard energy, increasing the electromagnetic frequency, and pumping it back into the neighborhood power grid.

SPOILER ALERT! The machine works – but not just for Cody. All over the neighborhood, people who should be long dead are popping up and acting like nothing is wrong. The ghosts don’t seem to remember their death and think they are alive. They are solid to the touch and presumably can do everything humans can do, like wash dishes, dance, etc. Some people in the neighborhood get to see their long dead wives and children again, while others are visited by less desirable ghosts from the past.

Trust me, this movie is not nearly as cool as it sounds! The problem was the pacing. The film was incredibly slow. The characters were likable, the acting was decent…there just wasn’t much of a story to cling to. You know what’s going on with the machine in the first few minutes of the movie. So then you wait for something to happen…and then you wait some more…and then you wait a little longer. I don’t want to give anything away for those of you who might watch it, but let’s just say the final “climax” is hardly worth the wait. I wish they would’ve spent more time on the ghosts – people reacting to the ghosts, living with them, etc. Instead, much of the time is devoted to Cody’s assembly of the machine.

I think writer/director Matt Osterman wanted to create a beautiful movie about guilt and the pain of love lost. The problem was the story just did not connect. I didn’t really care about the characters and just wanted the movie to end. I gave the film a two because there was a good idea at its core – it just didn’t resonate with me.

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Anonymous (1 year ago) Reply

Dammit! I was really looking foreward to that.

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Anonymous (1 year ago) Reply

Nah, it's actually a pretty decent little film... agreed it's not face paced or filled with bumps and scares... but that's what I liked about it!

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Anonymous (6 months ago) Reply

Missed the boat here man, two hours of a life not worth living...


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