Tubi Tuesday: The Curse of Professor Zardonicus (2022)

“The Curse of Professor Zardonicus” is an effective zero-budget mockumentary about a quest for answers and the desperate need to believe.

There’s something inherently human about our desire to believe in things beyond the limitations of our consciousness and our senses. From UAPs to the paranormal, many of us have had the experience of wanting something to be true so badly that we ignore all evidence to the contrary. For some, the alternative—that this really is all there is, that there’s nothing more than meets the eye, the ear, the brain—is more terrifying than aliens or ghosts.

The Curse of Professor Zardonicus, writer/director Gabriel Theis’s filmmaking debut, shows just how far some people might be willing to go to find proof for their beliefs.

Theis also stars as Greg Hartman, a low-ambition film major whose final Comm class project involves making a documentary about a fellow student. He ends up choosing Darren Mitchell (Alec White), an eccentric loner who spins an irresistibly wild story. See, Darren claims to have been attacked by none other than Professor Zardonicus, a campus urban legend of a professor transformed into a hideous monster in a fire in the old university science building over 50 years ago.

Many students have heard the tale, but almost no one believes it. No one, that is, besides Darren.

Armed with Darren’s unshakeable conviction in his quest to prove the professor’s existence, it seems like Greg’s found the perfect subject to clinch that A on his project. Darren begins to draw attention to himself on his quixotic mission, while Greg’s movie starts slipping away from him as he’s pulled deeper into Darren’s delusion.

But is that really what it is?

For what sounds like such a goofy premise, Professor Zardonicus is actually a pretty grounded and character-driven film for most of its runtime.

It’s a portrait of a misunderstood, self-inflicted outcast who doesn’t do much to help his case.

Darren is a tough character to sympathize with at times. He’s bullish, condescending, and often smug in his unwavering belief to the point of zealotry. Yet, a core of loneliness and need comes through. It’s clear that Darren needs to be believed by somebody to justify his obsessions.

For his part, Greg is all too happy to manipulate Darren for his own ends at first, going so far as to fake a sighting of the creature to get some choice footage.

He begins to resent Darren’s monopolizing of his time, but at the same time can’t seem to just walk away. Both men need each other to validate their choices, to make it worth the damage they’ve done to their lives. It all amounts to something surprisingly complex for what’s basically a zero-budget mockumentary made by some college students.

Theis said in an interview that he’s long been fascinated by conspiracy theories and how they grow.

The film echos the rise of seemingly ridiculous concepts like QAnon and Pizzagate from the internet’s back rooms to the mainstream in recent years.

The deeper down the rabbit hole you go, the more you need it to be true to justify the personal cost.

Darren wants Greg’s documentary to help legitimize him and make him seem like less of a nutjob, and how his message is being delivered ultimately trumps the message itself. The project’s relationship to the truth starts on shaky ground when Darren asks Greg to re-shoot his introduction to include a line about him volunteering at a local shelter, making himself look more saintly than he is. From then on, we can never be sure we’re not being manipulated, too.

I’ve seen this movie compared to the Creep series, Patrick Brice’s mockumentaries about a filmmaker following the exploits of an oddball who turns out to be a murderer, but Professor Zardonicus really doesn’t have a nasty bone in its body.

There are some hints that maybe Darren has other intentions for Greg, particularly during a sequence where he leads him into the woods to meet a fellow witness, but these turn out to be misdirections. The big question is whether or not Darren will be able to prove the professor’s existence, not so much as whether he’ll turn out to be a psychopath.

None of this is exactly fresh territory, but for such a small production, it’s executed pretty well. Despite a few moments that strain the movie’s supposedly unscripted credibility, the performances are solid, particularly from Theis and White as our reluctant central duo.

It makes for a promising debut from Theis, and I hope he’ll continue to pursue this line of work now that he’s solidly out of college and in the dreaded real world; it seems like he’s off to a strong start.