Review of From Beyond (1986) by Sean J — 21 Sep 2008

I was less than pleased with this movie. I'd been reading H.P. Lovecraft recently and seen a few movies inspired by his work (RE-ANIMATOR, DAGON). I heard this was a good horror flick from the 80's and decided to give it a shot. The final verdict: meh.

I'm all for gross-out and sex in a film but there were times when it was just unnecessary. If I'm not mistaken, H.P. Lovecraft rarely (if ever) used sex outright in his work. The monster effects were pretty good (with the exception of the little lamprey/fish monsters swimming around in the air and the winged thing towards the edn) but I felt like more could have been done. It just didn't feel inspiring to me. When I go to see an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft short story, I expect a lot of atmosphere and suspense, not a lot of shitty acting, horny psychiatrists, and goofy cops. This just didn't hit the nail on the head for me. All in all, it seemed like a bad ripoff of John Carpenter's THE THING, at least from a creature design standpoint. But most of all, it just wasn't horrific. When your movie is titled FROM BEYOND, it damn well better shock (which it didn't).

I still have respect for Stuart Gordon, who directed this in addition to RE-ANIMATOR and DAGON among other works, and usually he is pretty dedicated to honoring the original story. This definitely isn't his best work ever, but if he set out to make a goofy 80's horror flick (which he may have done, and which I USUALLY like) it worked. I just wasn't expecting that. Instead I was expecting something a little more horrific, a little more serious, but I blame that on bad information. So you can see why I might not like this movie. Had I known then what I know now, I may have enjoyed this film. So if you do decide to see FROM BEYOND, just go in knowing what you're going to get. I wouldn't want you to be blindsided like I was.