Is a good Lovecraft movie possible?

Cafe Society
21

Except for the general tendency to describe brief glimpses of tentacle-like structures and glistening gelatinous masses. grin But yes, much of Lovecraft’s strength comes from the idea that we (the reader) are given to imagine the creatures he presents out of whole cloth.

With this in mind, could a good film be made of Lovecraft’s work? Yes, but the filmmakers and producers of the film would have to keep in mind the lessons learned from The Blair Witch Project – that less is more, and that the audience is often most frightened by what they don’t see. Given the procilivity of the modern horror film to show almost every last detail of the latex wonders they create for the screen, this would be a fairly major paradigm shift, and would go against the instincts of many creators in the industry today.

It could be done, but it’s not bloody likely.

Perhaps the most stylistically Lovecraftian film I know of is one that relates almost not at all to Lovecraft’s work: Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder, which in its most horrific moments shows the audience only enough to make them ask “What the Fuck was THAT?!” but never really gives us a chance to identify what we’ve just seen. It’s a fine line to travel upon, but Jacob’s Ladder is masterful in that regard. A film made in that style, based on a fairly faithful interpretation of a Lovecraft story, would be a very effective interpretation, to my mind.

Jeepers Creepers was also surprisingly effective in this regard (yes, the title is dumb, but the film is better than the title leads one to believe), and parts of Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness also work the subtlety factor well, though other parts simply ruin the film. Even Clive Barker’s original Hellraiser uses some remarkably subtle techniques early on, but again, somewhat ruins the effect in the end (and the later sequels aren’t even worth discussing).

Of course, I’m a little biased. I’ve been slowly working on my own script version of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, maintaining a close interpretation of the story while making it a little more interesting to a modern audience (stronger, more developed characters, mainly). If it ever gets made, I think it could be very good. Also, as someone else mentioned, At the Mountains of Madness could make an excellent film, if done carefully. That one is also churning in my gears.

22

I liked The Ressurrected, too. I think it succeeds as a film (despite its flaws) because it took the source material seriously, as opposed to how Reanimator, and the later Full Moon type films did it. And the scenes in the lab and tunnels were damn good, to boot.

I personally think The Rats In The Walls could be made into a pretty good film if the main character is changed into the dead son (except he wouldn’t have died after WWI, not like he’s a zombie) and they figure out a good something to happen in the cavern below the house to make the narrator wind up in a padded cell. Oh, and they’d have to think up a new name for the cat, as I don’t think “Nigger-Man” would play too well these days. As for a director, I think Shyamalan could do it. Anyways, it’s a short short story, the visuals are pretty neat and the narrative is pretty straight-forward, therefore I think it can be done. But it’ll never happen.

23

There is a thread currently active about the Japanese horror film Uzumaki, which is very lovecraftian IMHO. The film features plenty of effects, but the spiral madness isn’t really explained.
In the thread about that film I compared it to The Color Out of Space, which it is very reminiscent of, story wise.

24

I saw “The Dunwich Horror” and thought it had a couple interesting moments. The success of the oppressiveness makes me wonder whether it would be better off as an “art film” rather than a standard Hollywood release. Strange camera shots, lighting, sound track de-emphasizing music, and heightening natural and supernatural sound effects.

I played a Lovecraft computer game called “Dark Seed” that was bad enough I didn’t have the urge to finish it.

How about one of those “Environment” mood relaxing albums? You know, lull your neighbor to sleep with the sound of ancient monsters screaming as they tear inconceivable animals to shreds. Keep dogs off your lawn the natural away, too!

25

I read a page long review about Dagon in Rue Mourge Magazine. The filmaker said he originally wanted to make the movie about the short story Dagon, but it was just too short (7 pages). So he based the movie on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, grafted the story of Dagon into it, and set it in Spain.

He said he had an awful time trying to pitch it to producers. You have to sum the ovie up in one sentance and the only one you can give them is, “It’s a movie about a Spanish town where everyone starts turning into fish.”

Even though it wont be completely faithful to the original works, it looks like it could be a decent movie. We shall see.

On a personal note: I think The Dunwich Horror would make a great movie or even The Colour from Outer Space.

26

But…he does…

Granted it’s in the last dozen pages of the story, but it’s also meer moments after he first lays eyes on an actual Deep One. Up to that point he’d been able to reason away the deformaties of the Innsmouth folk and dismiss the old guy’s stories as drunken fantasy. But, like so many others, the moment he is actually confronted with the horror, he faints.

27

But not just at the climax of the story. He has the good frtune/luck to pass out in a gully, where he can’t be seen, and after he’s already faced a number of horrors and reacted against them.

Definitely a more pro-active (isn’t that horrible word?) hero than in the earlier Lovecraft tales.

28

True, but the ‘horrors’ he’s thus far faced are more or less mundane - or easily written off as such. I still maintain that the main difference isn’t so much in the nature of the narrator, but in the events that surround him. As he is, mercifully, spared the true horror of Innsmouth until the deneument, he avoids the trap of so many other Lovecraftian characters - which, if it’d been under slightly different circumstances, he’d probably have fallen into. All IMO, of course.

29

I’ve always thought that The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath has the potential to make a nicely trippy animated film. I ran across a website some while back about some indie types trying to do just that, but I don’t have very much hope. Like most of Lovecraft, it’s certainly possible–simply not at all likely.

30

You know, nobody has mentioned “The unnameable”…
Or is that redundant…

31

I really liked that story, but it’s somehow hard for me to imagine it being made into a good film.

Still, I know what you mean. I was even inspired to draw the ghants from the story after I read it. Some great imagery in that story.

32

The movie Frailty did a pretty decent job of building tension without a lot of on-camera gore, so maybe Bill Paxton (of all people) could bring off a Lovecraft story.

Director Brad Anderson, in the movie Session 9, also did a good job of building tension in a Lovecraftian sort of way.

Finally, I’ll second the nomination of M. Night Shyamalan.

So there are three directors, at least, who I think could handle a Lovecraft tale.

33

Guillermo del Toro is working on an adaptation of In the Mountains of Madness.

His American movies concede a lot to commercial requirements (Mimic, Blade 2), but if you’ve seen his Spanish-language work (Kronos, The Devil’s Backbone), then you get a hint of what he could bring to a Lovecraft adaptation.

And Chronos already mentioned what I think is the biggest problem with adapting Lovecraft. Sure, the thick language gets in the way sometimes, but when it’s on, it’s freaky as hell. And when is it really on? When the protagonist turns to look at something, and Lovecraft writes (more or less), “His mind was unable to fully process what he was looking at. He was paralyzed with terror, and focused on a mouth, a glistening arm, a sliding foot. He stared at it, struck dumb by the sight of this indescribable shambling thing…” Yeah, it doesn’t always work, but when it does, shit like that makes my hair stand up.

And the point is, movies don’t really work like that. You have to see something to know it’s there. If a character dies offscreen, you suspect that they didn’t really die. If someone simply tells you what something is like, you have to see it for the description to be confirmed. So if you have people staring in horror at something, but you don’t cut to a reverse to show what they’re staring at, it’s going to seem really, really odd. A clever director could invent some new visual vocabulary for implying what the creature looks like without showing the whole beast, but cleverness, already rare enough in Hollywood, is, it seems, actively hunted down and killed when suspected by the average studio executive.

By way of comparison, consider The Blair Witch Project. Never once showed the creature. Only for a brief instant at the end do we have any sense of anything really bad actually happening. Most of the movie is the freaked-out trio growing progressively more frightened and dysfunctional. Some people (myself included) projected ourselves into the scenario and were legitimately terrified. Many more, though, kept waiting for the film to tell them explicitly and categorically exactly what was going on and weren’t frightened at all.

The point is: Lovecraft, as written, won’t work especially well for many people in a film adaptation. It’s a case where the material will need to be revised and reworked in order to have the same effect, because the visual medium is very different from the prose medium. The purists will howl, of course, as they always do, but then they chronically fail to understand the difference between seeing and reading.

Just my pair of pennies.

34

Oh yeah, two more:

Ridley Scott (based on his direction in Alien and Blade Runner) could pull it off.

I also think that John Sayles is so good at character development (see, Lone Star) that if he ever put his mind to making a horror movie in the Lovecraftian vein, he could turn out a hum-dinger.

35

Ugh… not if his recent work is any example. Hannibal, Gladiator, and G.I. Jane were about as subtle as a flaming brick smashing you in the face. White Squall was just a non-event.

I’m a big Ridley Scott fan, but his recent work has left me sorely disappointed. If we could somehow magically have the Ridley Scott who made Alien back today, then maybe… but personally, I think that Ridley is gone, replaced by the evil Hollywood version of Ridley.

Similarly, if Adrian Lyne were still doing films like Jacob’s Ladder, then I’d nominate him in a heartbeat. But he, too, has moved on from the sort of thing. Even though his take on Lolita was quite good, I’ve never seen him direct a film as skillfully as he did with Jacob’s Ladder. It was a one-shot for him, I fear.

I’ll third (fourth? fifth?) the nomination for Shyamalan as a good Lovecraft director. His talent for subtle themes and attraction towards darker material makes him almost an ideal choice.

36

I really have to re-emphasise Avalonian’s first post in this thread; so much of Lovecraft’s unique style came from his shying away from being specific about the monsters.

Everything was indescribable, or so utterly alien as to drive men mad (I’m thinking of all those impossible angles). I liked the idea of something so awful because it couldn’t even be imagined in the context of our world. I didn’t like it when he hit specifics about the Old Ones etc (what was the story where the chap dreams he’s living on an alien world? That was a letdown!). In that sense, all the CGI in the world couldn’t create something sufficiently horrible.

And that, unfortunately, means making a subtle film with an odd style that I really don’t think would sell in a popular market.

37

Gosh… thanks, Crusoe. :slight_smile:

For some reason, that made me think of another favorite Lovecraft story that might make a good film, “In the Walls of Eryx.”

Sadly, the main device of the story is something that relies more on what you can’t see than what you can… an invisible maze that constantly shifts its walls.

Still, done well, it could be very good.

38

As much as I love M. Night Shyamalan, I have to say that I really don’t think he could pull off a Lovecraft movie. Yes, he’s great at character development, and fantastic at building tension, but I fear his take on Lovecraft would be too light. Only if someone else wrote the screenplay could he pull it off. You’d need someone like Andrew Kevin Walker or possibly Darren Aronofski (who by the way would also make a pretty decent director for the film)

But I think Brad Anderson (SESSION 9) has my vote for director.

39

I was going to, but what’s the point? So instead I lumped it into “Reanimator, and the later Full Moon type films.” You can take that film, it’s sequel, Necronomicon, and whatever other crapfests got slapped with the HPL tag in the 1990s (but not Reanimator) and force an al-Qaida prisoner to watch them until he breaks and the UN would be on our asses in heartbeat. Who needs electric shocks high-pressure hoses when we have that?