The Activated Man

That ghost of a dog is still flying through the backyard in Nicholas Gyeney’s stunning astral horror feature, The Activated Man. The film opens with a boy (Bryce Adam Brown) running through an old, spooky bookstore. He comes across a stack of newly arrived hardcover copies of The Activated Man by Ors Gabriel. Ors Gabriel (Jamie Costa) and his partner Sarah Reeve (Ivana Rojas) recently lost their beloved dog, Louie, to sudden cancer.

Ors is grieving hard, while Sarah is throwing herself hard into her work as a cop. She has plenty to keep her busy, as there has been a rash of murder-suicides throughout the Echo Park area. Meanwhile, Ors is suffering as he has rescued Louie, who helped him cope for years with the wounds left by his father (Kane Hodder) walking out on him as a kid, as well as the decline of his mother (Sean Young). He keeps having disturbing visions of a gaunt man in a black fedora (Edward Michael Scott) out of the corner of his eye.

“…Ors keeps having disturbing visions of a gaunt man in a black fedora… approaching him with his long, sharp claws…”

Then, one night, his vision goes all granulated like film stock, and the particles in the air join to form the shape of Louie looking at Ors. The next day, Ors runs into his weird neighbor, Jeffrey Bowman (Tony Todd), while getting his mail. Even though Ors has never formally met Jeffrey, the strange, tall man already seems to know quite a bit about him. Jeffrey invites Ors to a spiritual meeting at an eclectic bookstore around the corner. There, they discuss how Ors has a third eye that is opening to be able to perceive the energy of his dog visiting him from beyond. As Ors feels his vision expanding, he then sees the Fedora Man in the bookstore, approaching him with his long, sharp claws…

It is amazing what Gyeney can do with the outline of a dog in the air. I don’t know if it was rotoscoped or if a very talented animator put together the traces themselves. When the ghost of the dog blinks at you with its ghost dog eyes, your torso caves in. Emotional engagement often goes unmeasured due to the misconception that it is purely subjective. So we talk of the pacing, lighting, special effects, and performances, but in the end, we leave out how deeply the emotional lures were able to hook us.