Summary
Occultism plunges into the labyrinthine psyche of Professor Alistair Finch, a man consumed by an insatiable hunger for esoteric knowledge and a profound grief following his sister Eleanor's untimely demise. Isolated within the sepulchral confines of his ancestral study, Finch, portrayed with a haunting intensity by Bud Fisher, meticulously deciphers arcane manuscripts, each glyph and symbol a portal to forbidden wisdom. His quest transcends mere academic curiosity, evolving into a desperate pilgrimage towards breaching the chasm separating the living from the spectral, driven by a yearning to reconnect with the departed or unlock the very fabric of reality. As his nocturnal vigils stretch into an eternity of ink-stained fingers and dilated pupils, the film masterfully blurs the demarcation between empirical observation and hallucinatory descent. The air thickens with unseen presences, the flickering gaslight casting monstrous shadows that dance to the rhythm of his escalating madness. Fisher’s performance is a tour de force of psychological disintegration, charting Finch’s transformation from rational intellectual to a vessel teetering on the precipice of transcendent insight or utter oblivion. The narrative culminates in a chilling, ambiguous ritual, where Finch either achieves a terrifying communion with an 'outer sphere' or succumbs entirely to the insidious whispers of his own fractured mind, leaving the audience to ponder the ultimate cost of unbridled intellectual ambition.
Review Excerpt
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From the moment the flickering title card of Occultism graces the screen, a palpable sense of dread, thick and suffocating as ancient dust, descends upon the viewer. This isn't merely a film; it's an archaeological dig into the darkest recesses of the human mind, a harrowing descent into an abyss paved with forbidden knowledge and the shattered fragments of sanity. Bud Fisher, in his dual role as both the visionary writer and the tormented protagonist, Professor Alistair Finch, orc..."
