1st SUMMONING (2018)

Studio:      Gravitas Ventures
Director:    Raymond Wood
Writer:      Chris Piner
Producer:  Raymond Wood, Randall Blizzard
Stars:     Hayley Lovitt, Teddy Cole, Brook Todd, Ace Harney, Jason MacDonald

Review Score:

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Summary:

Four aspiring documentarians encounter true terror while investigating an abandoned building rumored to be the site of satanic activity.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Aspiring filmmakers Leslie, Mark, Ryan, and Ace travel to the town of Harrison, Arkansas to make a documentary about the reportedly haunted Millbrook factory. The quartet begins by talking to townspeople, who repeat rumors that the abandoned warehouse is known for satanic activity.

The group interviews local pastor Conrad Youngblood, whose family has lived in Harrison for generations. Mark asks about a legend that says a ritual performed at midnight on October 6th will grant invokers with a wish in exchange for a price.

Conrad, whose odd demeanor unsettles the quartet, recounts a story about an ancestor who performed the ritual to save his sick wife, but was forced to surrender the souls of their three children. The children were found bound in stockades with ax wounds in their heads.

Leslie, Mark, Ryan, and Ace search a cemetery during the night for evidence corroborating Conrad’s claim. They find small gravestones strangely adorned with occult pendants.

The group hides when Conrad comes to the cemetery. Ace uses the opportunity to sneak back into the church to search for more evidence. Ace steals a picture of Conrad’s ancestors from 1892. A strange woman frightens Ace out of the church.

The four friends speed away in their RV as the pastor stares them down. Ryan screams at Mark about endangering everyone for his documentary, but stops when Mark gets a sudden nosebleed.

Leslie, who is currently dating Mark, privately tells Ryan, who is Leslie’s ex-boyfriend, that she found footage of she and Ryan having sex while formatting Mark’s memory cards. Ryan goes to confront Mark about secretly recording them, but again finds Mark bleeding from his nose while seemingly entranced.

Ace shows Ryan that one of the occult pendants from the cemetery somehow made it into his pocket. Ryan throws the pendant out the window.

The next day, Ace finds the pendant back inside the RV. Ace flushes it down the toilet and the RV suddenly breaks down.

Ryan privately tells Leslie that he wants to rekindle their former romance. Leslie asserts that she is committed to Mark.

Tensions rise among the quartet when Mark reveals he didn’t call a mechanic about the RV because he wants to go to Millbrook to finish the film. Ryan tells Ace he thinks Mark sabotaged the RV. Ace tells Ryan what happened with the necklace.

The group finds three wooden stockades in a forest. Mark suddenly coughs up blood. As tempers flare again, Mark insists on investigating the abandoned factory before he will be willing to go to a hospital.

Inside Millbrook, the quartet finds occult symbols drawn on walls as well as on scattered pieces of paper. At midnight, Mark has Ryan stand on a symbol to recite the summoning incantation. When Ryan has second thoughts, Leslie reads the ritual instead.

Mark disappears in sudden commotion in the darkness. Cloaked figures appear and pursue Ryan, Leslie, and Ace.

Ace finds candles along with more occult pendants after he becomes separated from Ryan and Leslie. Ace follows a naked woman to a room where cultists perform a strange blood ritual. Cultists eventually capture Ace as well as Ryan.

Fleeing from cultists, Leslie finds Mark in an entranced state. Leslie runs outside only to be captured in the woods.

Wearing an animal mask and red robe, Mark is revealed as the lead cultist. With Leslie, Ryan, and Ace bound in the stockades, Mark proceeds to individually murder each of them with an ax blow to their heads. Cloaked figures assemble around the scene before the camera cuts to black.

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Review:

Why did “The Millbrook Summoning” change its title to “1st Summoning?” Speculation suggests someone still buys into the outdated notion that numerical names receive top treatment in VOD listings. Most streaming services don’t really do alphabetical orders anymore though, so it’s doubtful there’s any appreciable benefit to starting a title with a number, or even with the letter “A.”

Immaterial interchangeability doesn’t only apply to the name. It applies to the movie’s basic setup too. One could just cut-and-paste the summary from any number of haunted building “found footage” films and reuse it to describe “1st Summoning.” For posterity’s sake however, some specificity has gone into the brief synopsis below.

The bright idea four aspiring filmmakers have for a documentary involves investigating the abandoned Millbrook factory. Rumor has it that the site hosts secret satanic activities. In particular, a ritual performed at midnight on October 6th grants invokers with a wish, albeit at a supposedly steep cost. The fearless foursome thus sets out for the expected trek of interviewing local townspeople, fighting amongst themselves, exploring dark hallways, and finally confronting the thing they never expected to find even though that’s what their whole project is about.

From specific beats to shaky execution, “1st Summoning” basically remakes “The Blair Witch Project” (review here) with the additional redundancy of being set in a haunted building. Horror literally has a thousand such movies. The reality is, unless a “Blair” clone contains a compelling celebrity, major hook, or some other sort of intriguing incentive, no one has any reason to watch yet another microbudget “found footage” film where amateur actors swing handheld cameras around cobwebbed corridors. As far as entertainment value goes, it’s impossible to recommend “1st Summoning” from the perspective of an unimpressed viewer.

That said, as a critic who has seen more “found footage” movies than 99% of fright film fandom, “1st Summoning” earns a higher relative grade purely from an effort appreciation standpoint.

Ironically due to some stunted delivery during early scenes, it’s evident that “1st Summoning’s” actors are reciting prewritten lines. The fact that they’re following a script is actually a plus in the ‘Pro’ column. I’ll almost always award a full star to a homegrown “found footage” film, even a copycat one, for not taking the truly lazy route by having its cast make up the movie through improvisation instead.

Chris Piner’s screenplay also concerns itself with developing personal drama between the players. Sure, that drama involves textbook temper tantrums related to former flame jealousies and other relationship strains. But I prefer to see people taking shots at creating characters with backstories rather than only reacting to situational strife.

Actors at least give a genuine go at being believable, even if they miss those marks. Jason MacDonald lays a leering Lurch gimmick onto his creepy pastor character with the thickest brush imaginable. He’s dialed up to eleven when everyone else is set to four or five. Given the choice between a performance going too far and not far enough though, I’ll opt for the former.

Little things count in little movies. “1st Summoning” gains no visual value from mounting a camera on a wheel well to show when a vehicle is in motion. But again, someone took time to set up such a rig when they could have gotten away with doing something simpler, or nothing additional at all.

A cynic could argue I’m awarding participation trophies for “1st Summoning” covering bare minimum bases of what any movie should do regardless. Remember that a vast majority of first-person films are so awful, the median quality line evens out to an incredibly low bar. Considering that curve, “1st Summoning” hits an above average mark as an indie production when paired against indolent “found footage” peers.

At the same time, I have to stress that an above average effort does not necessarily translate into above average entertainment. In addition to the burden of a “been there, done that” plot, “1st Summoning” suffers from several glaring technical issues. Most notably, one of the cameras weirdly rustles with the operator’s every flinch and fidget, and those clicks repeatedly nag at dialogue. Other scenes encounter different audio issues, including inaudibly low levels during one intimate exchange.

“1st Summoning” isn’t very eerie either. Limited “scary” moments are heavily back-loaded to the final 15 minutes, making it more of a chore to get through the full hour and a half when 70 brisker minutes would have functioned fine as a total runtime.

When you see the score, keep in mind that “1st Summoning” gets the benefit of being acknowledged for director Raymond Wood and company doing a better job than most who have followed in these familiar footsteps. Unfortunately, the short list of worthwhile “found footage” films still has no place for this movie, no matter where it falls in an alphabetical order.

Review Score: 55

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