October Horror 2012: In the Mouth of Madness

So we are a few days behind but tonight we watched John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness and most of 2007's Cthulhu.


In the Mouth of Madness was released in 1994 and based on a screenplay written by Michael De Luca.  It's got a pretty stellar class including Sam Neill, Jürgen Prochnow, David Warner, Charlton Heston and Frances Bay.  This is the only movie this week that's not directly based on a Lovecraft story, but is a completely original screenplay.  Obviously it's heavily influenced by Lovecraft's work, but oddly doesn't have a lot to do with H.P.'s At the Mountains of Madness aside from some token mentions of Shoggoths.  It's got more in common with The Shadow over Innsmouth.

It's a what-if story that deals with 2 major points:  What if H.P. Lovecraft was a contemporary author, hugely popular in the 90s?  And what if stories have the power to become real if enough people believe in the reality?

The movie once again uses the framing device of having the story told in flashback while John Trent (Sam Neill) narrates the events to Dr. Wrenn (David Warner).  Trent is a freelance insurance investigator, which seems to be an oddly specific form of private detective, who is hired to track down the missing author Sutter Cane. Cane is some sort of modernized version of Lovecraft himself, possibly with a dash of Stephen King thrown in for good measure.  He sets most of his stories in a fictionalized New England town and writes about indescribable other-worldly horrors.  There's an added wrinkle that his books are rumored to be so deranged they actually make some people go mad.

The publishing company needs Trent to find Cane's latest manuscript because the book is due out soon and they've already started to market it.  The story is called In the Mouth of Madness...oh, hey, I see what you did there!  Trent manages to find a clue in Cane's cover art, leading him to a small town which seems to be a real-life manifestation of Hobb's End, the town from his stories.  Hobb's End is another common fictional town used by several authors in several stories, very similar to Lovecraft's Arkham. There's a nice mashup of insanity, hallucinations, sea creatures along with the meta aspect of meeting the author of the story with the same name as the movie.  The ending is wonderfully meta.

The soundtrack was a little odd.  Carpenter's usually involved with the music in his own movies but the soundtracks in his 70s and 80s movies were a lot more fitting, once he hit the 90s he started featuring rock guitars.  It fit decently in Ghosts of Mars, since that movie was really action-oriented.  In this movie it just feels a little awkward.

The creature effects were better in The Resurrected, so this movie kindof fails to scare with those.  It does have some good camera work, but the narrative is what's creepy here.  It's unsettling, but only if you think about from the perspective of Trent's character.  Even if you can't get into his skin, the movie is still fun because it is a great what-if story.