Review of In the Mouth of Madness (1995) by Curtis S — 07 Dec 2009

I'm a fan of H.P. Lovecraft so it's no surprise that I enjoyed this movie. While this film was certainly good, I feel it fell just short of greatness.

Sam Neill delivers a pretty solid performance in this film, although it certainly could have been more powerful. No complaints in the acting department I suppose although nothing shines.

The story was great and the screenplay was well written but I felt like there was a large miss in the direction, which I was not surprised by with John Carpenter at the helm. Many aspects of the film here had the opportunity to be truly terrifying if Carpenter had taken them a step further. That is what I felt the whole film, like I was being teased at the prospect of potentially being frightened but was just served higher doses of suspense as the film progressed. For instance there were scenes where the children were shown and looked genuinely terrifying and sounded creepy, but something about the way the scene unfolded and the camera work and ambience that just felt like a tease. There were several scenes where creatures were shown and characters simply ran away unscathed. The movie failed to take advantage of my emotions in most instances aside from building my anxiety. In this sense this movie failed as a "horror".

On another note most of the movie is fairly well done and the atmosphere through 75% of it is pretty unnerving. The creatures weren't awful looking which is good and it didn't go over the top with effects. The film was surreal and mind warping. However it never once capitalized on what could have been.

Who should see this?

1) H.P. Lovecraft fans.

2) John Carpenter fans (all 7 people).

3) Steven King Fans.

4) Horror fans.

5) Psychological Thriller fans.

6) Fans of the Surreal.

7) Demonic Children.