The film “Egregor” reached the audience through a complex production cycle. It was planned to premiere on March 10, 2022, but the full-scale invasion of Russia put an end to this prank. In addition, the joint production of Ukraine, Poland and the USA also created its own difficulties. As a result, the premiere of “Egregor” took place six years after the start of filming. We tell you in the review below what the movie turned out to be.

“Egregor” / Egregor

Genre mystical thriller
Director Stanislav Kapralov
In roles Omri Rose, Olena Lavreniuk, Valeria Karaman, Andrzej Zelinsky, Olena Turbal
Premiere cinemas
Release year 2023
Site IMDb

The girl Lesya (Olena Lavreniuk) unexpectedly learns that her father, Professor Orest Grabovskyi (Daniel Olbrichskyi), committed suicide. The circumstances of his death are too vague, which leads to thoughts of a conspiracy. The girl turns to American detective and family friend Arthur Weiss (Omri Rose) for help. Together they have to dive into the behind-the-scenes world of Ukrainian churches and understand what the egregor is all about.

Egregor is a metaphysical term that means a group non-physical entity, a kind of information field of a gathering of people with a single goal.

There are various egregors in the world, for example, the egregor of the cinema or the state. However, with the help of manipulation of public consciousness, it is possible to bring some specific egregor to the fore – and thereby set the development vector of at least the entire country for many years to come.

The script of the film unfolds around this idea. The problem is that he himself does not explain his terminology for some reason. The film is limited to a short recording of Professor Grabovsky’s speech, which is quite formal, and that’s it. After all, this explanation should become the starting point of the plot. Without a normal tie-in, other scenes of the film are perceived as somewhat far-fetched and even pointless.

The screenwriter of the film Lyubomir Levytsky did not hide that the team was engaged in a kind of analog of “The Da Vinci Code” with Ukraine in the main focus. “Egregor” resembles the work of Ron Howard in almost everything. This applies to the pace of the plot, the staging of scenes, the dynamics of relationships between characters, and general ideas. Only the “Da Vinci Code”, even though it was far from perfect, worked quite masterfully with its main ideas.

One of the main problems of the film is editing. It is so torn and structureless that sometimes it is difficult to understand the sequence of events on the screen.

Heroes constantly and unexpectedly move from one location to another. At one point it went to extremes where the characters at the end of the movie say “they might have character X” and we were shown a dead character X almost at the beginning of the story.

The film manages to maintain the atmosphere of mystery quite successfully (if we do not take the vague connection of everything, of course). The story constantly throws up new details and plot twists. And the flavor of the Orthodox Church in combination with Ukrainian myths will definitely appeal to many.

The atmosphere is enhanced by the cinematography, which is at its best in the film. Many scenes differ not only in locations, but also in shooting approaches. In one of them, for example, special lenses were put on the camera so that the light of the street lamps at night would blur into stripes. It turned out very aesthetically pleasing. And there are enough of such methods here.

“Egregor” successfully doses dialogues, action and the revelation of another mystery. From the point of view of dynamics, this is not at all a dull and sloppy movie. Apparently, even too “not saggy”, but all because of the above-mentioned chaotic editing.

Another important problem of the film is the composition of dialogues. Many phrases here seem to have been written by a neural network that was fed several dozen mediocre thrillers straight from the “scratch”. The main characters here try to always seem witty, but it almost never works out.

But when it comes to more personal and psychological scenes, the situation becomes better. Acting also helps. Sometimes it looks completely unconvincing, but in general it feels tolerable.

The release of “Egregor” in Ukraine coincided well with Easter, which recently passed. After all, people still have a fresh feeling of a religious holiday with all its rituals. And the film will play with the theme of religion, so it will be able to find a response on this level as well.

In general, “Egregor” does not cause much enthusiasm. Perhaps the film lacks the poignancy of the finale of the same “Da Vinci Code”, which forced a different look at the history of mankind. The final answers in “Egregor” are as banal as possible. And as for a mystical thriller, this is almost a sentence.

Pros:
competently constructed atmosphere of mystery; colorful locations; excellent cinematography; an interesting combination of nuances of Orthodoxy and Ukrainian traditions

Cons:
terrible editing that destroys all immersion in the story; stupid and far-fetched dialogues; banal ending

Conclusion:

“Egregor” is the case when the film was clearly “extended”. It has a lot of great ideas, but they all fall apart on production drag. Therefore, one gets the impression that during this time the authors themselves forgot what they wanted to say