1994 horror, dir. John Carpenter, Sam Neill, Julie Carmen: IMDb /
allmovie.
The insurance investigator is sent to find the wildly popular horror
author, who's vanished with the overdue manuscript of his latest book…
I couldn't work out, on watching this, whether it was a bad good
film, achieving much less than it should have, or a good bad film,
achieving much more that expected from a low-quality foundation. There
are some beautiful ideas here, most obviously in the malleability of
the boundaries between reality and fiction; but rather than go beyond
the basics, of saying "look, here's this neat idea, whoa man that's
heavy", the film just moves on to the next practical effect. When
someone discovers he's a fictional character after all, there's none
of the soul-searching of Last Action Hero; there's just laughing
insanity.
I'm starting to like Carpenter despite his special effects, I think;
in The Thing they certainly add to the story, but here I find they
distract from the huge issue of the breakdown of reality and bring the
narrative down into the tawdry personal arena of something horrible
wanting to kill you. There are lots of films about that already, even
in 1994.
And then we get Jürgen Prochnow being splendidly messianic, not to
mention coming to terms himself with the idea that what he thought was
his own writing inspiration was always being given to him by Them.
He's great, and he's set against the splendidly looming Cathedral of the
Transfiguration (Markham, Ontario). More!
But no, bad viewer no biscuit, Sam's on the run, and as he tries to
drive away he keeps finding himself back in the same place, and yes
John we get it, you don't have to keep hammering on this same point…
Perhaps the problem is that I'm much more an SF fan than a horror fan:
I treat the breakdown of reality as a problem to be understood and
perhaps solved, not as a frightening idea to give me a frisson of
horror.
It probably doesn't help that I don't think calling your characters
things like "Gilman" makes this a Lovecraftian story; these outsiders
rely on humans to open the way into the world for them, and no true
Outer God would so demean itself.
As usual if you want more of my witterings you should listen to
Ribbon of Memes.
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