After discovering a bizarre book, a young man is plagued by unexplainable occurrences.After discovering a bizarre book, a young man is plagued by unexplainable occurrences.After discovering a bizarre book, a young man is plagued by unexplainable occurrences.
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Featured review
Spectacular one-man indie creepshow
Out of all the hundreds of thrillers I've seen in my lifetime, I can't recall seeing one as uniquely terrifying and innovative as "The Ceremony." Though there are a handful of people listed in the cast, it's really just Scott Seegmiller. He plays Eric Peterson, a slightly smug over-achieving college senior who, on the eve of his graduation, finds a bizarre old book in the middle of four or five lit candles on the floor of his admittedly sumptuous rental house. He's sharing the place with several of his friends. They're renting it from a professor who's currently in Korea doing research for a large corporation. As Eric is in the throes of cleaning the place and packing up, he gets a call from the landlord, who informs him Eric has won a prestigious position with his firm and needs to complete some admission activities before flying to Korea to join him.
But Eric can't quite shake the old volume and weird tableaux. It's all about Satan and devil worship, see, and is filled with eerily alluring chants and incantations. He decides to write about it for his admission paper and contacts an academic who translates some of the text for him.
As daylight fades and night falls, strange things begin to happen in the house. Lights, TVs, stereos, all go on and off randomly. Shadowy apparitions appear in the corners of the dark rooms. Bizarre screams and laughter echo here and there. Vague shapes run in and out of rooms, never lingering long enough to be identified. Eventually, the doors all jam shut, the lights go out...and then the real fun begins.
To fully appreciate how effective this movie is, you have to remember how low its budget is, and how it really is a one man show by actor Seegmiller. His initial scenes are stiff and his line readings are hokey, but as the action gets moving he settles into a very believable downward spiral of bewilderment, entrancement, terror, and panic.
For all its sparseness, "The Ceremony" does not look like a cheaply made film (its budget was $155k...not a paltry sum in this league anymore). It is beautifully shot in anamorphic widescreen by Robert Toth. His framing alone of stationary objects in the house is disorienting and chilling. It features some truly unnerving art direction by Elizabeth Cook (cardboard cut-outs of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and a freaky group of likenesses of Eric and his friends grace the house). Eric Giordano's original score is ominous and not overblown in its effectiveness.
By all means, turn the lights off for this one. You'll swear someone's in *your* house.
But Eric can't quite shake the old volume and weird tableaux. It's all about Satan and devil worship, see, and is filled with eerily alluring chants and incantations. He decides to write about it for his admission paper and contacts an academic who translates some of the text for him.
As daylight fades and night falls, strange things begin to happen in the house. Lights, TVs, stereos, all go on and off randomly. Shadowy apparitions appear in the corners of the dark rooms. Bizarre screams and laughter echo here and there. Vague shapes run in and out of rooms, never lingering long enough to be identified. Eventually, the doors all jam shut, the lights go out...and then the real fun begins.
To fully appreciate how effective this movie is, you have to remember how low its budget is, and how it really is a one man show by actor Seegmiller. His initial scenes are stiff and his line readings are hokey, but as the action gets moving he settles into a very believable downward spiral of bewilderment, entrancement, terror, and panic.
For all its sparseness, "The Ceremony" does not look like a cheaply made film (its budget was $155k...not a paltry sum in this league anymore). It is beautifully shot in anamorphic widescreen by Robert Toth. His framing alone of stationary objects in the house is disorienting and chilling. It features some truly unnerving art direction by Elizabeth Cook (cardboard cut-outs of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and a freaky group of likenesses of Eric and his friends grace the house). Eric Giordano's original score is ominous and not overblown in its effectiveness.
By all means, turn the lights off for this one. You'll swear someone's in *your* house.
helpful•71
- bob_meg
- Apr 25, 2011
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $155,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 24 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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