THE CONSPIRACY

THE CONSPIRACY

 
Let me start off by saying up front that I absolutely love this movie. It is the brain child of Christopher MacBride who both wrote and directed it, his only feature length film thus far, in fact. It is an incredible story of two filmmakers who are best friends that look into a guy named Terrence, played pitch perfectly by Alan C. Peterson, and find a conspiracy rabbit hole that goes far deeper than they ever thought possible. The two filmmakers are Aaron and Jim, played by Aaron Poole and James Gilbert, respectively.

This movie is genius on multiple levels, but the extent that it stays close to reality is what made it so irresistibly enticing to me. To begin with, early on the conspiracy theorist, Terrence, points out multiple occasions where governments have either misreported events to draw their nation into war or withheld information that left its own people vulnerable to attack that could then result in a nation’s involvement in a war.


The filmmakers themselves are not exactly drawn to his exclamations of people being slaves and “sheeple” so much as they are intrigued by how many people comment on the Youtube videos that agree with him to some level. So Aaron and Jim arrange a meeting with Terrence and he points out several other possible conspiracy theories that he believes are true. His walls are covered in newspaper articles with pins and string connecting different ones to others in a massive, complicated web of intrigue.

Aaron, particularly, gets sucked in and starts to buy into it all, spending hours of his own time looking through all the material that Terrence has gathered and trying to figure out the connection that will unlock the mystery and make sense of it all.

If one is familiar at all with the reports of Bohemian Grove retreats for the rich and powerful they will immediately notice the inspiration it provided for the basic idea in the movie.

Here is the Alex Jones documentary from several years ago where he infiltrated one of the Bohemian Grove meetings and managed to film some of their “rituals”. (I think Alex Jones is a douche, but it is interesting to watch the raw footage from 58:45 – 1:25:45.)


Between Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg Group and other elite secret societies MacBride meshes these together to create an entity called the Tarsus Club that seems to represent all of them. MacBride further keeps us unbalanced with constant twists and turns, incorporating different well known conspiracy theories and the real people involved in them, as well as potential men in black type threats whose origins are unknown. He even throws in a portion of a JFK speech that turned out to be real and part of a bigger whole when I looked it up. It was given on April 27, 1961 and JFK clearly identifies that there is a group of elite people who want to manipulate from the shadows and he affirms that it is un-American and will not be tolerated.

“The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence, on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of election, on intimidation instead of free choice, on gorillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system that has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine. Its preparations are concealed not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”

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Aaron and Jim learn about the ancient god Mithras that the people of the Tarsus Club worship and whom their rituals revolve around. Eventually, they decide to plan and carry out an infiltration attempt and this is where the movie shines even brighter than I thought possible up to that point. The internal workings of the cult and their rituals are put on display as well as the level of brotherhood they hold to. A true cat and mouse scenario plays out in which the suspense is ratcheted up to incredibly intense levels with a resolution that will leave you falling off the edge of your seat and reeling from a high blood pressure episode.

In addition, during the infiltration the wardrobe and set are meticulous and extravagant and the music put on display is completely captivating. (Here you can read an interview with the man responsible for the cinema score and hear how he came to choose the instruments and the arrangement of the core piece, Threnody of Mithras. ) It’s an amazingly powerful and driving score that will suck you into the movie and make you feel like you are right there with Aaron and Jim during the ritual.
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This movie has gone greatly unnoticed it would seem and hasn’t really garnered the acknowledgement and admiration it so deserves. I wholly give it a 5 out of 5 stars rating. It was in my top five movies that I watched last year as well. So do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s currently available on Netflix in the US and also on VUDU and even Youtube if you can’t find it anywhere else. 

MIKE DUKE