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A rich American couple holidaying in Spain find themselves trapped in a coastal village that is home to a cult of half-human mutants.
It's a bit weird to think about how H.P. Lovecraft, who is widely considered one of the most influential horror authors ever, hasn't seen much in the way of direct cinematic adaptations of his work - maybe it's because his words are so reliant on the notion that certain things can be so indescribably terrifying that they send people insane at the sight of them is extremely hard to effectively translate into a visual medium. It's not like there haven't been some noble efforts to do so - John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness works as a loose pastiche that does a good job of capturing the essence of the author's signature brand of unknowable cosmic horror while Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator is arguably the best direct adaptation of a story (though the fact that it's a fundamentally simple tale of mad scientists and zombies means that it's easy enough to turn into a splatter-happy B-movie instead of something that evokes the existential dread of Lovecraft's most noteworthy work). Gordon once again tries adapting Lovecraft with Dagon, which leans further into Lovecraft's established "Cthulhu Mythos" with its emphasis on the horrors of unfathomably cruel gods and the freaks who worship them. As with Re-Animator, the set-up is a familiar horror one - naive travellers end up falling prey to a town with a dark secret - and the question of whether or not Lovecraft's sense of terror translates through scene after scene of lumbering fish-people chasing the hapless protagonist (Ezra Godden) is answered quite definitively.
Fortunately, I would consider Dagon moderately successful in not only capturing what makes Lovecraft scary but also being a solid horror movie in its own right. Gordon crafts the second act as a nigh-relentless game of cat-and-mouse with nothing but the rain beating down and mutant shrieks to soundtrack Godden barely managing to stay ahead of his pursuers to the point where a protracted expositional flashback plays less like a momentum-wrecking interjection than a much-needed breather. The progression into overtly Lovecraftian territory is suitably curious - troubling dreams give way to nightmarish reality, the author's well-documented racism manifests through its twisted tale of demented half-breeds, and the third act ramps up into some truly nasty insanity for its surviving characters. Parts of it have aged more than a little poorly (just look at that CGI - or don't), but outside of that the film builds a solid atmosphere that compensates alright for the film's other weaknesses. In this regard, I would recommend Dagon - I don't necessarily think it's an underappreciated classic but there is quite a bit to appreciate about its distinct approach to adapting one of horror's great writers that is at least worth considering if you have a vested interest in horror obscurities.
#6 - Dagon
Stuart Gordon, 2001
Stuart Gordon, 2001
A rich American couple holidaying in Spain find themselves trapped in a coastal village that is home to a cult of half-human mutants.
It's a bit weird to think about how H.P. Lovecraft, who is widely considered one of the most influential horror authors ever, hasn't seen much in the way of direct cinematic adaptations of his work - maybe it's because his words are so reliant on the notion that certain things can be so indescribably terrifying that they send people insane at the sight of them is extremely hard to effectively translate into a visual medium. It's not like there haven't been some noble efforts to do so - John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness works as a loose pastiche that does a good job of capturing the essence of the author's signature brand of unknowable cosmic horror while Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator is arguably the best direct adaptation of a story (though the fact that it's a fundamentally simple tale of mad scientists and zombies means that it's easy enough to turn into a splatter-happy B-movie instead of something that evokes the existential dread of Lovecraft's most noteworthy work). Gordon once again tries adapting Lovecraft with Dagon, which leans further into Lovecraft's established "Cthulhu Mythos" with its emphasis on the horrors of unfathomably cruel gods and the freaks who worship them. As with Re-Animator, the set-up is a familiar horror one - naive travellers end up falling prey to a town with a dark secret - and the question of whether or not Lovecraft's sense of terror translates through scene after scene of lumbering fish-people chasing the hapless protagonist (Ezra Godden) is answered quite definitively.
Fortunately, I would consider Dagon moderately successful in not only capturing what makes Lovecraft scary but also being a solid horror movie in its own right. Gordon crafts the second act as a nigh-relentless game of cat-and-mouse with nothing but the rain beating down and mutant shrieks to soundtrack Godden barely managing to stay ahead of his pursuers to the point where a protracted expositional flashback plays less like a momentum-wrecking interjection than a much-needed breather. The progression into overtly Lovecraftian territory is suitably curious - troubling dreams give way to nightmarish reality, the author's well-documented racism manifests through its twisted tale of demented half-breeds, and the third act ramps up into some truly nasty insanity for its surviving characters. Parts of it have aged more than a little poorly (just look at that CGI - or don't), but outside of that the film builds a solid atmosphere that compensates alright for the film's other weaknesses. In this regard, I would recommend Dagon - I don't necessarily think it's an underappreciated classic but there is quite a bit to appreciate about its distinct approach to adapting one of horror's great writers that is at least worth considering if you have a vested interest in horror obscurities.