Reviews

It is a sad thing that Lovecraft's writing style lends itself so well to camp and B-flicks and so poorly to artful and complex movies. At least, that is if you are to analyze the movies based on the Mythos. There are very few movies based on Lovecraft's work that surpasses your average B horror movie, and in this case, even though the movie itself looks and feels nothing like a B horror movie, it actually suffers more from it.

We are introduced to Professor Russ Marsh, a homosexual. Basically, that's all we ever learn of him, and it's a bit confusing that his sexual orientation takes up so much screen time. Him being gay does tie in with the story, but not to such an extent that the film makers should be forced to remind us of his orientation every five minutes, which is the case in this movie. At the very beginning of the film, the homosexuality bit feels almost a bit fresh for a Lovecraft film, however.

Over all, the intro to the movie is very moody and beautifully filmed. The car crash is not really much of a surprise, but it helps set a good atmosphere.

Everything falls apart once Russ reaches his home town in Rivermouth (Innsmouth?) county. Russ's father - who appear to be about five years older than Russ - is the leader of some odd cult, and also a horrible actor. He chastises Russ for being gay throughout the movie, and, despite the horrible acting, we are treated to a few nice scenes of a dysfunctional family. The bad acting seems to be the hallmark of Rivermouth county, and with the exception of Russ's childhood friend and soon-to-be lover Mike, the cast's performance ranges from mediocre to dismal.

Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Insmouth is picked apart and shuffled freely as the plot unfolds, and it seemed to me that all the good parts from the story were missing. The Shadow Over Insmouth had several set pieces that have been included in previous adaptations, so I can forgive the screenwriter for not including them, but the bits that are there are so few and far between that you never feel the presence of the Mythos, and you certainly don't feel that you're watching a film based off of a Lovecraft story.

Connecting global calamities like the melting of the polar caps and the war in the Middle East to the Cthulhu Mythos is a nice touch, but it is never delved into, and feels almost like the movie taking a five minute break while bombarding us with stock footage. Not resolving anything is very Lovecraftian, but this movie doesn't even attempt to create any plot or problems not to resolve. Over all, it feels really empty.

The biggest complaint that I have now and that I had when I first heard that this movie was being made, is that the film makers don't really seem interested in the subject matter. The nods to the Cthulhu Mythos in the movie seem stapled on more than anything, and it is quite obvious that no one involved in making the movie had any concept of the Mythos.

I suppose that in order to be able to watch any decent Mythos movies I need to keep turning to the HP Lovecraft Historical Society. They may not have any budget, but they have heart and a deep rooted understanding of the source material. I'd recommend watching The Call of Cthulhu by Andrew Leman and the HPLHS any day over this loose adaptation.

After reading some of the negative reviews on this movie (there aren't a lot of them, but still) I just felt the sudden urge to poke fun at someone.

A few reviewers keep saying that "sure, I understood it, but it hasn't got a plot". If you think that you didn't understand it, so why do you say you did? The plot may not be as obvious as, say, Apollo 13, and it doesn't just deliver everything on a silver platter, but it's there and it's profound. If you would, for once, pick up a book you could even read the excellent novel of Arthur C. Clark, as it would lend you some clues to the meanings of the movie, but I guess reading is out of the question, right? Something else I noted was that many claims it is "boring, two and a half hours of nothing". Well, it's not aimed for audiences of six-year-olds, or those adults with the attention span of a six-year-old. Like every complicated message it takes a while to carry it across. In fact, every scene in this movie, every moment of every scene, is very meaningful and carries part of the message - including the three-minute of black screen in the beginning of the film. "Oh my God, there's no explosions, no action, nothing... just a black screen. This movie sucks!" As for acting, well, it's perfectly adequate. The scenes on the Discovery are all breath takingly suspenseful, and the acting overall is realistic. For the most part, it hints of the naturalistic American cinema that is to come in the 70s.

The special effects are of course, extremely good for it's time. Certainly, there are no CGI in this movie, as it is made in the 1960s. What is there though, is truly beautiful cinematography with astounding vistas of space. (Space IS empty, you know.) In conclusion, I believe I am for the most part preaching to the already enlightened, but those few of you who will not give this movie the time it takes to bring across it's message I say give it another go, keep an open mind and don't expect the movie to do all the thinking for you. Your brain is quite a large organ and should contain the necessary synapses to think deeper than the surface, read between the lines if you will. Try it. It doesn't hurt.

Nah, it's not all that bad, but pretty close. This movie could be called "Independence Day 2: Attack of the Bad Weather!" as it has about the same amount of intelligence as the famous Aliens-Attack-tripe. As always when it comes to this kind of movies, special effects goes first, and script, acting, mood, everything else, comes second. And even the effects are bad.

Movie kicks off by piling cliché after cliché, and we already know how the movie is going to end. Wait, we've still got about five hours of drivel to watch, haven't we? Oh, well...

Then disaster kicks in. Literally for both the main characters and for everyone watching the piece of manure on the screen. Suddenly Earth (America) is under attack by CGI weather effects, and people (ugly people) starts dying. The beautiful people, and a dog, survive. Alright, and this is supposed to be based on science? Right.

Now comes the heroic tale of one man (and his expendable side-kicks) and his journey to save his estranged son who is saving his friends in a New York library by burning a lot of books. We get to follow the main character's arduous walk from Philadelphia (?) to New York, a walk that seem to take a little under two days, and that in a terrible blizzard.

I've got to stop here... this is too hard. Here we are, faced with a very real problem, something that may very well change our planet, eradicating many forms of life, and this is the way to make people aware of it? In the DVD-box I even found a flyer informing me about the effects of global warming, telling me that many of the events in the film may come true. What? Are people really so stupid or thick-headed that we have to force feed them disinformation to make them start thinking about a problem? This is like those people saying that one cigarette will kill you, or that if you exercise and don't eat a lot, people will like you. It's not only bad cinema, it's dangerous cinema. Sure, obviously Americans need to be educated a bit to be able to take the environmental problems of this planet seriously, but this is not the way to do it.

Shame on you Emmerich! Shame on you!

Was brought to this movie along with a group of friend, and none of us knew anything about the movie... well, we figured as much as that it was about cave-crawling, but at least I had no clue about the plot.

First third of the movie really creeped me out. It was the most claustrophobia-inducing piece of film I've seen since... well, I don't know. I was on the edge of my seat, getting into the quirks of the characters, and waiting for the inevitable breakdown of moral, leading the group to start killing each other - a la Lord of the Flies. Imagine my surprise when we are suddenly shown a silhouette of a gaping maw... A collective "What?" sounds through the audience.

Paranoia sets in. Who - or what - is in the cave with the group? More claustrophobia, and still no explanation. Something primal starts gnawing in the back of my head. Then, suddenly, we see it, and along with the rest of the packed auditorium, I scream. I'm not a screamer, hell I may flinch, but I never scream. I laugh at my own reaction together with my friend sitting next to me. Surely it can't happen again. A few minutes later it does.

The resulting chase through the cave system in search of a possible exit is as suspenseful as Alien, something no other film has been able to be, and when the end finally comes, it all makes sense. Why bother with scientific explanations? Why have everything spelled out for you? The true horror lies in what you cannot understand, cannot put your finger on. This is it. Combined, the truly unnerving setting, the strange creatures (what were they, and how did they come to be? We'll never know) the dynamics of the groups, ably set up during the first few minutes of the film, and most adequate acting, makes this one of the top horror films I've seen.

If you want a Hollywood ending, pseudo-scientific explanations, bad CGI and big explosions, you're better of renting something like AvP, or if not "horror" (pah!), perhaps Day After Tomorrow (How perfectly awful that movie is). On the other hand, if you want a good movie with a terrific (horrific) atmosphere and well timed moments of terror, then I suggest this one.