Review of Cthulhu (2008) by Eric H — 27 Aug 2009

I had zero expectations going into this film, and they were adequately rewarded. "Cthulhu" is a hodgepodge of thematic material taken from the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, mixing up elements of his Dagon and Cthulhu mythos, slathered over apocalyptic visions of The End of Civilization As We Know It.

It's a standard Gothic horror formula, one which Lovecraft himself employed from time to time: prodigal son returns to cursed ancestral home, eventually to learn that he's predestined to become Master of the whole kit & caboodle. The spin here is that he's gay, which was the wedge issue that originally drove him from his family... which was a good thing for him. Now he's back, and the predictable dramatics resume.

The thing about this mini-budget, no-name-starring, borderline amateur film is that... IT WORKS. Or, it works pretty well, most of the time. There's no exact HPL story that it's adhering to, although his "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is the most obvious inspiration. Instead, Lovecraft's mythology is cherry-picked by the filmmakers to give this contemporary story from depth; a glimpse of that almost-beyond-our-ken cosmic horror that The Gentleman from Providence was so able to conjure. "Cthulhu"'s cinematography goes a long way in this regard, filling the screen with chilly visions of fog-enshrouded seashores and sullen, lowering skies -- making the Pacific Northwest are more-than-adequate substitute for Lovecraft's brooding New England locales. This is one of the best looking low-budget-shot-on-video movies I've seen in a long time, and should be an huge inspiration to aspiring horror filmmakers.

For some strange reason, the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, and his Cthulhu Mythos, is largely neglected by mainstream Hollywood, and remains the domain of the amateur and fan filmmaker. The 2005 black & white silent film "The Call of Cthulhu," by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, remains the exemplar of this particular subgenre, but "Cthulhu", made in 2007, is a pretty reasonable example of the state of the art.