Review of Cthulhu (2008) by Sam C — 29 Jun 2009

Cthulhu did not turn out the way I had originally thought it would. I saw the trailer a long while ago, and forgot everything about it, minus some people standing in a room. So, for the most part (aside from being a huge Lovecraft fan), I came into this blind.

Cthulhu follows a gay professor who returns to his hometown which is most likely Innsmouth, judging from all the references we see. The first half of the film is a real bore, where we see allegories to our main character being homosexual and all the haters who hate hardcore on him. It's not the subject material, or the subtext to the subject material that I found boring, it was the horrendous filmmaking. The lighting is an absolute mess. The camera shots are dull and contained some of the ugliest close-ups I've ever seen. The editing is so frightfully bad that it would drive Walter Murch to madness the same way Cthulhu drives wayward sailors to madness. The editing continuity is so bad at points that it took me out of the movie. The pacing is lacking and at points make the viewer struggle to understand where our main character is taking off to, which I usually shrug off but couldn't forgive in this case.

Some of the characters are a complete waste, case in point being the main characters bisexual friend, who only hangs around so our main character can update our audience on what's been going on in the past few scenes since we were all way to bored to care. I honestly thought this movie had potential.

And it does. Kind of. I liked how the hometown (Innsmouth) had a modern take to it. About three-quarters of the way through the film things start to pick up when our hero traverses through an underground tunnel. There is some neat imagery in the dream sequences, and things really heat up when a riot happens outside of the jail cell. I feel that people who haven't read Lovecraft's stories (mainly Innsmouth) might be confused, but seasoned fans might appreciate this.

The ending is very convoluted and muddled, yet at the same time satisfying. I am almost certain that the main character sacrifices his friend, the sole reason being that the filmmakers had no idea where to go if our hero killed his father instead. Like I said, this is a very muddled movie, and I would only recommend watching it if . . . uh . . . you're a Lovecraft purist? I wouldn't even say that. Lovecraft would hate this movie because, quite frankly, he hated homosexual people. And bad movies.