Horrorfest 2016: In the Mouth of Madness

One nice thing about Horrorfest is if I keep doing this long enough I eventually end up checking out the entirety of certain directors' filmographies that I might not normally get around to. John Carpenter is a good example: I'd seen plenty of his movies before I started Horrorfest, but deliberately going out of my way to watch them has helped me see a lot more than I probably would have left to my own devices.

I've put off Carpenter's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS for a few years because for whatever reason H.P. Lovecraft shit annoys me. I realize I've seen a million things inspired by Lovecraft, and that I've liked plenty of them, but I also think Lovecraft kinda gets a pass from enthusiasts. Certain people just like Lovecraft, and therefore anything that even nods towards Lovecraft is praised, and so a movie like IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS about a horror author who brings about an apocalypse of ancient beasts blah blah blah will obviously be well liked whether or not it sucks.

So, it kind of sucks. But it's also kind of good. The good stuff: Sam Neill stars and he rules. He's an insurance investigator hired to track down a missing Stephen King-esque author (Jurgen Prochnow) by the author's publisher (Charlton Heston). Seems this author's books are known for driving certain people insane. We know from the movie's opening that Neill eventually ends up in an insane asylum, and he tells his tale to a visiting doctor (David Warner). So, you can see, the movie's rife with talent.

That's the good stuff: the talent and the premise. Once Neill tracks Prochnow down in a weird town that may or may not exist and seems to be populated by the author's characters and other beasts, where the author can control things as if he's God (or Satan), the movie loses some of its charm. That's because it doesn't really have a plot. Don't get me wrong: I like a good non-plot as much as the next guy, but this flick is basically just Neill seeing one weird thing after another, with little or no meaning tying these things together, until it eventually stops.

This is where some Lovecraft aficionado would come in to say that if only I'd read this short story and that short story by Lovecraft then I'd totally understand what the movie was about and who the monsters are and that it all means something and blah blah blah. That might be true, or it might not, but it doesn't really matter, anyway, does it? Lovecraft is a red herring, here: the movie should be good whether or not I'm familiar with the greatest works of the racist misogynist himself.

Anyway, nice try John Carpenter, but this one's a miss.