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In the Mouth of Madness
(1994, John Carpenter)
I am not a movie reviewer. However, at times, I may feel like writing a movie review on this forum. This is my first one.
I recently revisited an old favorite of mine. In the Mouth of Madness. This is the story of John Trent, a freelance insurance investigator, who investigates the disappearance of a major horror paperback writer named Sutter Cane. Sutter Cane's books have been known to turn people into paranoid schizophrenics. They are so terrifying, so mind-breaking, that the people who read them go insane. Trent is good at exposing cons and scams and he feels this Sutter Cane disappearance is nothing but a publicity stunt put on by Cane's publishers at Arcane Publishing. So was the axe wielding maniac who tried to kill John Trent early in the movie. "Do you read Sutter Cane?" the axe wielding maniac cryptically asks. His eyes seem to have double pupils.
In the Mouth of Madness is not a particularly spellbinding film, but it's one worth talking about. What exactly is going on in this movie? John Trent and a woman by the name of Linda Styles, who is Sutter Cane's editor, travel to New Hampshire and discover a town called Hobb's End -- same town in one of Sutter Cane's books, The Hobb's End Horror.
"What if Sutter Cane isn't writing fiction?" Linda wonders at one point. Later, we find Sutter Cane at a church that is supposedly the seat of an evil that came before mankind and is wider than the known universe.
"For years, I thought I was making all of this up," Sutter Cane says, clicking away at his typewriter. He turns to a door filled with ooze and monstrous demons trying to break through from the other side. "But they were telling me what to write......."
Sutter Cane even seems to suggest that he is now God. As John Trent struggles with reality, disbelieving everything that is happening around him.... he ultimately comes face to face with a movie based on the new Sutter Cane book, In the Mouth of Madness. The movie stars him, and Linda Styles, and everyone else he encountered during his trip to Oz. John laughs maniacally, realizing that he was a character in a Sutter Cane book. Or has John Trent simply just gone insane?
The film is the final part in a John Carpenter "Apocalypse Trilogy" that began with The Thing and continued with Prince of Darkness. It's been awhile since I've seen The Thing, but I always found Prince of Darkness a scary exercise in cinema and I recently rewatched it last year. Prince of Darkness is scarier than In the Mouth of Madness, but I found the latter to be a more enjoyable film.
Are we all characters in a book being written by some God out there? I found myself wondering this during the movie. It's something I've thought about before revisiting this movie, in fact. I believe in fate and that our destiny is ultimately something we cannot truly control and predict. When you think about it, is our own future any less scary than the future apocalyptic world that John Trent finds himself in? He loses everything. Won't we lose everything the older we get, the closer we get to death? Are our lives nothing more than horror fiction being written by some God out there? A God who loves to terrorize. Think about it. Old age, diseases, cancer.... the loss of people in our lives.... all things we expect from the future. Do we really need a scary book to scare ourselves? Or are our lives and futures going to be scary enough?
(1994, John Carpenter)
I am not a movie reviewer. However, at times, I may feel like writing a movie review on this forum. This is my first one.
I recently revisited an old favorite of mine. In the Mouth of Madness. This is the story of John Trent, a freelance insurance investigator, who investigates the disappearance of a major horror paperback writer named Sutter Cane. Sutter Cane's books have been known to turn people into paranoid schizophrenics. They are so terrifying, so mind-breaking, that the people who read them go insane. Trent is good at exposing cons and scams and he feels this Sutter Cane disappearance is nothing but a publicity stunt put on by Cane's publishers at Arcane Publishing. So was the axe wielding maniac who tried to kill John Trent early in the movie. "Do you read Sutter Cane?" the axe wielding maniac cryptically asks. His eyes seem to have double pupils.
In the Mouth of Madness is not a particularly spellbinding film, but it's one worth talking about. What exactly is going on in this movie? John Trent and a woman by the name of Linda Styles, who is Sutter Cane's editor, travel to New Hampshire and discover a town called Hobb's End -- same town in one of Sutter Cane's books, The Hobb's End Horror.
"What if Sutter Cane isn't writing fiction?" Linda wonders at one point. Later, we find Sutter Cane at a church that is supposedly the seat of an evil that came before mankind and is wider than the known universe.
"For years, I thought I was making all of this up," Sutter Cane says, clicking away at his typewriter. He turns to a door filled with ooze and monstrous demons trying to break through from the other side. "But they were telling me what to write......."
Sutter Cane even seems to suggest that he is now God. As John Trent struggles with reality, disbelieving everything that is happening around him.... he ultimately comes face to face with a movie based on the new Sutter Cane book, In the Mouth of Madness. The movie stars him, and Linda Styles, and everyone else he encountered during his trip to Oz. John laughs maniacally, realizing that he was a character in a Sutter Cane book. Or has John Trent simply just gone insane?
The film is the final part in a John Carpenter "Apocalypse Trilogy" that began with The Thing and continued with Prince of Darkness. It's been awhile since I've seen The Thing, but I always found Prince of Darkness a scary exercise in cinema and I recently rewatched it last year. Prince of Darkness is scarier than In the Mouth of Madness, but I found the latter to be a more enjoyable film.
Are we all characters in a book being written by some God out there? I found myself wondering this during the movie. It's something I've thought about before revisiting this movie, in fact. I believe in fate and that our destiny is ultimately something we cannot truly control and predict. When you think about it, is our own future any less scary than the future apocalyptic world that John Trent finds himself in? He loses everything. Won't we lose everything the older we get, the closer we get to death? Are our lives nothing more than horror fiction being written by some God out there? A God who loves to terrorize. Think about it. Old age, diseases, cancer.... the loss of people in our lives.... all things we expect from the future. Do we really need a scary book to scare ourselves? Or are our lives and futures going to be scary enough?
Last edited by Dallas; 08-03-18 at 10:18 PM.
