2005 horror, Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, Matt Foyer:
IMDb /
allmovie. Great-uncle left
some very disturbing papers…
The story was regarded as unfilmable, consisting as it does of
three or four distinct narratives and reaching no particular
conclusion. And yet this adaptation works for me – a short film, done
roughly in the way it could have been in 1928 when the original was
published.
All right, sometimes they try too hard - as with the heavy use of
the Film Noise filter to add hair and scratches. And perhaps the
hollow-eyed stage makeup for madness would have looked quite
old-fashioned by 1928, when you were getting more naturalistic acting
and even early talkies.
But there's some gorgeous visual design. I'm particularly a fan of the
"Swamp Idol" used by the Louisiana cult, an oddly art deco thing
verging into modernism, and the set for R'lyeh, with blocks tilted at
odd angles and some perspective tricks to let a sailor fall through a
hole in reality. (The stop-motion Cthulhu doesn't work as well for me,
and I'm not quite sure why; I'm no stranger to clunky special
effects.)
This is a very faithful adaptation of the story, so it inherits its
problems – no significant female roles, for example. But it's a film
that gets its job done and then ends, after a scant 46 minutes, and I
very much like it.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.
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