I wrote this originally for IMDB but as my review is too long for their guidelines I'll either have to edit it for them or say "fuck you" to them. Either way, here's the way it's supposed to be. Here's a link to the movie if you want to read about it.
Peace be with you,
Shag
ATTENTION: THE FIRST PART OF THIS
REVIEW DOES NOT CONTAIN SPOILERS! READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO DECIDE TO
WATCH THIS MOVIE!*****************************
I can't decide whether I want to give
this a three or four star review. What does it matter, really, that
one little star? Well, with this movie it matters quite a bit.
The four star review goes like this:
Cthulhu is a movie that doesn't really work. It's sort of dumb, it
has serious holes in the story/plot and whatnot, none of the
characters are truly engaging or well-rounded. But there are enough
interesting parts to keep the film from falling into that certain
horrible flatness that makes a film utterly unwatchable. In fact
there are (seemingly) enough nearly interesting moments in the movie
to keep what appears to be an inevitable coma at bay, but not enough
of them to make this watcher forget that he is very likely to fall
into a coma at any moment. If there were a few more of these moments
or even if just once through the whole of the hundred minutes a scene
that truly glowed with coolness would have happened the movie would
have gotten five out of ten stars and a very different review. As it
is, this movie reminds me of the album “Lulu” by Lou Reed and
Metallica. I find “Cthulhu” worthy of seeing for the audacity of
its existence. That anyone even TRIED to make this thing is amazing. Yes, this movie is a mess, a total wreck, sort
of boring, poorly acted, etc...BUT it holds some vague something or
other together that maybe it shouldn't have (and possibly didn't) imagined. Watch it, I guess, if “noble failures” turn you
on.
*******STOP READING NOW UNTIL AFTER
YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE IF YOU AREN'T JUST READING THIS FOR SILLY
PURPOSES*************************************
The three star reviewer in me wants to
point out that this movie seems to have another movie laying atop it,
a ghost of the movie that would have been if...(.) There is a
Cthulhu Mythos movie here, somewhere, just not on the screen. Maybe
it exists in the negative spaces of the film where there's not much
going on (there is a lot of this) or maybe in the minds of the actors
who are trying really hard to express “the horror” but can't
QUITE get it. I could see this film made with old silent era acting
style to build some tension (Much like the “Call of Cthulhu”
short, silent film) through the use of bulging eyes and surprised
mouth “O”s, flaring nostrils and batting lashes, dark grimaces,
whatever, anything to actually convey the “horror”, because there
is horror here. It's not the lack of “horror” permeating the the
movie that is missing: the concept of the movie is horrific. Truly
Lovecraftian, truly dark, desolate, weird and etc...pretty much “The
Dunwich Horror” which is, as I say, truly frightening. The problem
is the script, the characters basically go through the horror without
actually noticing “here is horror.” The horror always lurks
behind some brassy engraved door with a big iron skeleton key
sticking out of it that the protagonist never bothers to open, down
some dark mossy tree lined lane he never bothers to drive down.
Mostly what happens is sort of confusing and weird. Being a gay male
raped by Tori Spelling should be horrific but the script doesn't
allow for any sort of legitimate reaction and like the rest of the
horror it is briefly acknowledged and cast aside, another “event”
in a long series of “events” that don't really add up to
anything. The movie just sort of sits there like a fat, fishy
ancient beast who mostly farts and scratches himself.
To address the “gay” aspect of the
movie which seems to have riled up many other reviewers on IMDB: the
gayness isn't the problem with this movie. The gay themes of this
film don't make it a bad Lovecraft adaptation any more than it being
a Lovecraft adaptation makes it a bad gay movie. “Cthulhu” or
no, “Gay” or no, this movie would still be the same piece of
crap. This movie more or less sucks because the people who made it,
for some reason, chose to film exactly the wrong things in exactly
the wrong ways. It would have been nice if any part of “Cthulhu”
would have “gone there” but it doesn't. It just (sort of)
refuses. The film has a whole bunch to say. It's loaded with good
ideas. The concept of the movie is pretty terrific. A gay love
story wrapped in the Cthulhu Mythos? HELL YES! Sure! Let's have
it! Unfortunately the love story (whether it were straight or gay
wouldn't matter) is just tepid. They don't really seem to be in
love, in fact they're sort of just friends and you get the feeling
that when the protagonist leaves he'll be doing so by himself as the
love interest sort of drowns himself in the bottle, being very much
like the scratching/farting Ancient One. The Mythos is not exploited
at all. Many Lovecraft movies suffer from this same fate, of course,
as the Mythos, strangely enough one of the richest veins of untapped
film ecstasy that should be relatively easy to work with, has really
never been successfully translated to film. The creepiness just
oozes from Lovecraft. In fact even this piece of dreck pulls off a
few unsettling moments just because that energy is damn well creepy.
But the creepiness is vague because the whole movie is vague. Is the
whole town (like in the “Dagon” movie and “The Dunwich Horror”)
in the cult with just a few insane adversaries still living on for no
real reason? Well, no, not really...I think. Maybe the cops aren't
involved or maybe the drunk and the girl at the liquor store aren't
involved, but everyone else, I guess, is. This vagueness is the
hallmark of the film. There are scary things that should freak
everyone out but don't, there's this dead kid who seems to be some
sort of important figure who just sort of fizzles out, left on the
cutting floor somewhere, abandoned to the least importance of almost
every character, and there's nothing really shocking about it.
Nothing really startling either. Or interesting for that matter. In
fact, other than the fact that there might be some sea
descending/ascending there's not much difference between this town
and any other small town. Basically like a corrupt preacher deals
drugs or runs a child porn ring, but with Cthulhu, and most of the
town are in on the secret, but the movie never really tells us
whether they are or not.
My final thoughts of this movie is that
it was really supposed to be a different one. The director,
producer, writer etc...probably had to abandon more lofty goals to
settle for what they could do with the cash they had or something
like that, because it doesn't seem like this is really a movie. More
a sketch of one, like a demo tape, that should have been filled in
with a much wider palette of color than they had at their command.
At least that's what the optimistic me wants to believe and so mote
it be. That's why it does get four stars, but seriously, this is a
really silly flick.
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