← Back to Reviews
in
In the Mouth of Madness (1994) r
A tribute to King and Lovecraft that didn't manage to hold my interest and felt little too fanboyish.
Sam Neill plays an insurance investigator who is hired to find a missing bestseller horror novelist Sutter Cane. He follows the clues to New England with Cane's editor and finds the man in the fictive town from his books. Line between fiction and reality is crumbling and the Old Ones plot their return.
After Prince of Darkness this was a major disappointment. It almost felt like getting as many King and Lovecraft references had been more important than making an interesting story. There was no consistent style and the movie continuously wandered from King's modern small town horror to Lovecraftian themes of Stygian depths swarming with ancient malignant beings to comedic weirdness.
For some reason Sam Neill is a hit and miss actor for me and in this one I didn't like him. Not exactly sure why but he just seemed out of place. Lots of characters were more or less crazy so they felt weird and it's kid of hard to judge their acting. The movie lacked clear visual style as well and as a result parts of it looked good, others decent and some even bad. I just have to emphasize how far this is from the quality of Prince of Darkness in every way.
Oh, and I wonder if it's only coincidence that the travel sequence to Hobb's End is exactly like the traveling in Joe Hill's NOS4A2 or did he make a tribute to a tribute?
-
A tribute to King and Lovecraft that didn't manage to hold my interest and felt little too fanboyish.
Sam Neill plays an insurance investigator who is hired to find a missing bestseller horror novelist Sutter Cane. He follows the clues to New England with Cane's editor and finds the man in the fictive town from his books. Line between fiction and reality is crumbling and the Old Ones plot their return.
After Prince of Darkness this was a major disappointment. It almost felt like getting as many King and Lovecraft references had been more important than making an interesting story. There was no consistent style and the movie continuously wandered from King's modern small town horror to Lovecraftian themes of Stygian depths swarming with ancient malignant beings to comedic weirdness.
For some reason Sam Neill is a hit and miss actor for me and in this one I didn't like him. Not exactly sure why but he just seemed out of place. Lots of characters were more or less crazy so they felt weird and it's kid of hard to judge their acting. The movie lacked clear visual style as well and as a result parts of it looked good, others decent and some even bad. I just have to emphasize how far this is from the quality of Prince of Darkness in every way.
Oh, and I wonder if it's only coincidence that the travel sequence to Hobb's End is exactly like the traveling in Joe Hill's NOS4A2 or did he make a tribute to a tribute?
-