Lovecraftian Horror film reviews - In The Mouth of Madness

I strove for Lovecraftian film content to fill the empty gap left by the cancelled project of Guillermo Del Toro’s, the adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness . Here I found a film directed by John Carpenter himself, written by accomplished screenwriter Michael De Luca. In the Mouth of Madness is a Lovecraftian detective film featuring Sam Neil.

Sam Neil.

Lovecraft.

Oh my god.

John Carpenter’s version of The Thing is still to this day one of my favourite films. Like a gem, it never ages. He filmed Mouth of Madness years after, so my anticipation was high—but not too high. I’m willing to be forgiving of the potential at their disposal, it being a mid 90s feature and all.

Sam Neil plays an insurance agent hired to track down a missing, enigmatic author of immense controversy named Sutter Cane, a Lovecraftian writer of biblical proportions more influential to literature than Lovecraft himself, Bram Stoker, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz and every other author combined. His works are so incredible they outsell the holy bible and provoke new vicious faiths upon the world!

Sounds pretty awesome, right? Prepare to be disappointed.

I won’t hold it against the filmmakers for using Lovecraft as their primary focus for the movie, it’s been done for ages and the guy would probably be honoured. However, we’re not after old H.P. We’re after Sutter Cane, who’s an instrument of casual-targeting for the film to maximize the audience numbers. This means Christianity and other religions that the average Joe actually has some grounds on are all thrown into the mix, kind of like a religious version of Super Smash Brothers, with Jesus and Moses fist-fighting Cthulhu and Dagon in the demonic nucleus of Azathoth. Maybe we’ll even throw Obi-Wan and Harry Potter in there, with Tom Cruise and John Travolta as unlockable characters, and downloadable content for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yeah, it looks pretty cool in my head—but again I’m making this all sound better than it really is.

Needless to say, the crossing of the Cthulhu Mythos into existing faiths makes for a very cluttered outcome, so it’s no wonder why practically none of that resulting faith is explained. There’s that blur we can’t see into, and it’s not the blur of terror Lovecraft stabs as us, it’s the blur of bad storytelling. Sam Neil and his female friend Julie Carmen just fall victim to a few uninteresting scenarios from Cane’s books which barely have any build up anyway. Not one of the events is as shocking as any in the Cthulhu Mythos, so if the writers just stuck to what worked without mixing things up, the concept could easily be informed to newcomers and the fans would be kept happy. The fundamentals of the mythos aren’t that hard to understand.

Almost every story old H.P Lovecraft ever wrote featured creatively imposing environments teaming with sickness and dangerous secrecy. Sadly, In The Mouth of Madness lacks this crucial atmosphere in comparison. Even The Thing had merit for atmosphere. Sam Neil and Julie Carman just go to New England, and a bunch of practically random stuff happens, and very rarely is it scary.

The film does deliver some unique and appealing elements, but applying twists to a story we can’t even make sense of to begin with? Swing and a miss.

The acting’s great on Neil’s behalf, and he reacts nicely to the situations, the effects were forgiving, but overall it’s the structure that fails to deliver. These things are meaningless if there’s no clear direction. Newcomers won’t understand the story; old fans will be pissed off it wasn’t done right. Personally, I missed Lovecraft himself the most. This Cane guy just doesn’t cut it. Of course a change in story would have been in order, most likely from page one, but one that would have been worth it.