It seems like when you have a small budget and you’re making an independent horror movie, you take one of two roads. First, you make a zombie movie. Everyone does this because everyone knows at least thirty people who will turn out to be splattered with fake blood as long as you promise to at least pay them in cheese burgers. On the other hand, you make a haunted house movie. Each one has its flaws as few people seem to be capable of making a functional movie with zombies and/or ghosts. Each one wants to show you too much and weigh you down with tedious jump scares but here’s one that set my alarms off.
Phasma Ex Machina, from writer/director Matt Osterman, seems to exist on the same plane as time travel puzzler, Primer. That is not to say that it looks quite so cerebral, but the soft-spoken, come-as-you-are production paired with the idea of the dire consequences of a garage-based tinkerer who creates a device capable of providing spirits with the electromagnetic energy they require in order to manifest and interact with the living leaves me desperately wanting more.
An ambitious mystery, with strong elements of science fiction and the supernatural, Phasma Ex Machina follows the lives of two brothers and an electrical engineer trying to decipher a series of strange events. Everything changes when they discover that the distance between the living and the dead isn’t all that far.
According to the movie blog, the flick is in the late stages of post-production and will be making the film festival circuit beginning this spring. The trailer gives you just enough to go on and it looks supremely spooky, the way a haunted house movie is supposed to be. I’ll be following this production until it hits the rest of us in the mass market, so keep your eyes here. Or check out the Phasma website.
