Review of Dagon (2001) by Julian T — 04 Nov 2011

Stuart Gordon's Dagon is an intense and unique film based mostly on H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth and his much shorter work entitled Dagon. This is really epic material in a strangely soaked Spanish environment. A Lovecraftian cult worshipping the underwater deity Dagon have taken over a small town on the Atlantic coast of Spain. A sailboat on pleasure cruise ends wrecked there. They will not be leaving anytime soon.

Now situationally this is a fairly obvious menu. Gordon does, at one point, dive off the gory edge, but this is a Stuart Gordon film after all. Meanwhile the chase through dripping dampness of the town is really a pulse quickener. What makes this work is the danker than dank waterlogged environment and the extraordinarily emotional relationship of Dagon's daughter played in a one of a kind performance by Spanish actress Macarena Gomez to our trapped nerd, played by Ezra Godden.

Macarena plays the part of tentacled siren princess with real fish-eyed believability. She was given instructions by Gordon (whose previous Lovecraft works include From Beyond and Re-Animator) to keep her eyes from blinking. When in the end Uxía (Gomez) craves Paul (Godden), whom she calls Pablo, she calls out to him with such an urgent imploring sad doomed yet loving tone in her voice she becomes perhaps the ultimate mermaid nightmare: Her eyes filled with wells of tearful salt water, her robes of gilded Symbolist splendor. She reveals the dark secrets of the unholy sect.

Uxía: Pablo, it is your destiny... We had different mothers, but the same father... We are children of Dagon. Your dreams. Remember your dreams, Pablo. They brought you here.

Paul: No. They were nightmares. They weren't real.

Uxía: Every dream is a wish.

Paul: Somebody help me! What's happening to me?

Uxía: You are my brother. You will be my lover - forever.

The tone Macarena hits here is the crescendo of the entire film, that sense of hopeless beauty and tragic certainty. I don't agree philosophically with the fatalism of that black romance, but who hasn't felt that temptation to give into it. And as Paul sets himself on fire and plunges into the sea Uxía follows. And together they descend into the depths of the tentacled God Dagon's realm. One feels the drowning, yet liberation. Yet we know to follow is to be annihilated.

I can't think of another film to present the darker aesthetics aspects of the antique Symbolist dream so vividly. For those with strong stomachs yet sensitive hearts I strongly recommend Dagon.