NOTE: The makers of Guidestones contacted us about the manner the movie is distributed. A bug in their email scheduling code resulted in our getting all of the episodes jumbled in our inbox simultaneously. This bug has been fixed and we have updated the review below to reflect these distribution changes and have added other important observations about this groundbreaking movie production.
We have written extensively about the Georgia Guidestones, the enigmatic and highly controversial monument that is sometimes called “Humanity’s Tombstone.” A good summary of our research can be read here.
And now Guidestones launched today, a new interactive movie based around that menacing granite edifice located in rural Georgia. Distributed as a 50 part series, the fictional account contains numerous, easily identified clues which the viewer can use to pull up web content from across the Internet. There is even an associated decoder ring application the earnest viewer can use to decipher selected evidence sprinkled throughout the movie. Some of the “supplemental” material is real (in fact, our research is cited here), but much of it was created for the movie.
The movie is distributed to the viewer through scheduled email. After signing up for Guidestones at guidestones.org, the viewer is “pushed” links to episodes in movie time. In other words, if a day elapses between episodes, the emails for the second episode will arrive a day later than the first. This innovative approach allows and encourages the viewer to interact with the movie by investigating its many hidden clues.
This could pose a problem if the clues are too well hidden. Fortunately, there are many clues that are very easy to identify, while others are more subtle ensuring that the viewer will quickly catch on, drawing him into the action, while challenging the viewer as well. Altogether, the interactive nature of Guidestones is a success, deeply engaging the viewer while enmeshing him in an immersive world of evidence that is a blurry mix of fact and fiction.
The total run time for the movie is two hours, but there is a lot of additional offsite footage that this does not include.
Guidestones claims in Episode 1 that it is based on real events and the names of the characters were changed in order to protect them. In fact, the producer, director and writer of the $300,000 flick, Jay Ferguson, revealed that the movie was inspired by two real Ryerson University students. Regarding the woman who was inspiration for the female lead, Ferguson says:
I met with her and she was a bit dodgy (in regards to) what she was saying about the Guidestones and conspiracies, and so I started doing some research and some of her things started turning out. Certain things that I was able to back up in some of my research.
From Twitter, Ferguson wrote:
I was approached 3 yrs ago by a woman involved in a murder investigation. She didn’t want me to make a documentary. I made a drama instead… I have shown guidestones to the woman who’s story it is based on. She is glad it is about to be public but does not want her real name used.
Despite its modest budget, the movie unfolds across numerous locations in Canada, USA and India and production quality is very good. The movie was shot with digital SLRs and edited on laptops.
Sponsored by Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball and Samsung among others, Guidestones can be viewed here. The press release for the movie can be read here.
The dark spirit of the Georgia Guidestones monument is accurately captured in this dramatic account and I highly recommend Guidestones for its entertainment value, innovation and intelligence. In fact, the ending demonstrates esoteric insight that adds a very sinister twist to the movie, but the ending might be too subtle for most viewers to fully appreciate.
All in all, Guidestones is about as much fun as a realistic accounting of the Apocalypse can be, while providing an engaging and thrilling story.
Most importantly, Guidestones presents a realistic — though horrific — scenario that is consistent with our research. MAKE THIS MOVIE GO VIRAL! It is worthwhile to see based solely upon its motion picture quality — it is much better than most of the brain-dead pablum coming out of Hollywood today — but Guidestones also contains a message that needs to be spread.
As Jay Ferguson stated in his Guidestones interview on FernTV:
It’s always important to scrutinize everything you see. We like to think we are in control of our lives but the fact is many of us live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. Time to start scrutinizing the status quo. Time to start walking the walk!