So I watched the new Lovecraft reimagining this weekend, and I have to say I actually rather enjoyed it!
Nic Cage chewing scenery, suitable Lovecraftian weird horror, all updated to modern times, and I think the choices made mostly worked for bringing a 93-year-old story to today.
This was the return of Richard Stanley to the director’s chair, for his first feature film since his ill-fated 1996 run at The Island of Doctor Moreau.
My more in-depth thoughts (with spoilers):
I understood the reasoning for many of the changes, and I thought that they seemed to work for the most part. Usually I’m the kind of annoying person that finds ANY change to the source material to be blasphemy, but not so much in this case.
The unnamed narrator from the story takes part in all the action in the movie, which is understandable. Names were changed to more modern names, of course. Nahum Gardner becomes Nathan Gardner, and his sons Thaddeus, Merwin, and Zenas become Benny, Jack, and a daughter… Lavinia (yes, not a modernized name, but a meta-reference to The Dunwich Horror). There was an inexplicable amount of Tommy Chong, as an itinerant squatter on the Gardner’s property, but I thought his character worked.
The VFX were pretty damn good! Once the mutations began, it was very reminiscent of The Thing (1982). The first big “Holy Shit!” moment was very much not in the original story, but damn, it worked really well in the movie.
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MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS
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I was NOT a fan of the appearance of the Simon Necronomicon in the film at the time of viewing, but in thinking about it since I think it was a cute meta-reference. Especially since in the end, it had no actual impact on how the events played out, and the Simon Necronomicon is in actuality not truly related in any way to Lovecraft’s works… so it not actually being of benefit is quite fitting. At first I was thinking that maybe Lavinia would be semi-protected by the sigils and elder signs, which would pave the way for a sort of sequel in the form of a re-telling of The Dunwich Horror (in that story, Lavinia is a misshapen woman of albino appearance, and the “color out of space” tends to leave its victims nearly colorless… so it could have been a neat bridge), but in the end, like in the original, the farm was left as a “blasted heath”… the only survivor being Ward, the hydrologist/surveyor (and stand-in for the unnamed narrator from the original).
I was pleased with the ending, and with the brief glimpse of the WEIRD in the cosmic void. There was talk that Stanley is planning on a trilogy, at the least, and if they continue in this vein I am definitely excited to see his vision played out.
Lovecraft is notoriously hard to adapt, largely because his descriptions are often so abstract, wrapped in hyperbole and notions of apocalyptic wonder/horror, that there’s not a lot specific to latch on to. Which is why the film actually did quite a good job, and the one visual “portal into another realm” (shall we say) was brief, non-explicit, but perfectly in keeping with the glimpse into true monolithic terror that his narrators often see.
That said, while Nic Cage being CAGE (the scenery-chewing hamathon we’ve gotten so used to) is perfect for a film like MANDY, he was really the wrong choice here. There are enough really strange, remarkable, and unnerving things happening already, and when the truly shocking horrors start to pile on to this fairly normal family (bickering kids, busy parents, but not really dysfunctional), the last thing the film needs is someone that pulls you out of the movie so completely the way Cage does.
His character makes some choices that are poignant, others off-kilter or unexplainable, but all supposed to be rooted in a loving patriarch, but Cage can’t reel it in or show any restraint at those moments, so he turns from a grounded, nerdy patriarch one minute and then a bug-eyed freakazoid the next (which for other actors may be destabilizing but for him is merely “Been There Done That”).
But while this may be frustrating, it doesn’t ruin the movie. It remains haunting, even if not as powerful as I’d hoped. And even though some of the effects trappings may be a little too similar to Carpenter’s THE THING and its “prequel”, it’s not just a copycat and a lot of the design aesthetics are put to good use.
The theatrical window was really short (it’s pretty much disappeared from the SF Bay Area) so guessing the effect will diminish into just a “Stranger Things/Black Mirror” variant on TV, so I’m glad I got to see it on the Big Screen. The climax alone with the scene referenced above made it worth it.
Cage definitely was going full on “NOT THE BEEEeees!” in this.
So as near as I can tell, his sudden (and jarring at times) changes in diction and accent were supposed to be him channeling is father for no reason at all… Which was one of the things that I thought could have been left out. An unnecessary addition to the story which distracts and pulls you out, especially with Nic Cage going full Nic Cage. I didn’t mind the OTHER parts, his increasingly bizarre decisions… I mean, he basically followed Nahum’s story arc. Madness is just part and parcel with Lovecraft.
I also was not fond of the opening scene with Lavinia’s ritual. Pointless, added nothing to the story, I felt. But that was just because it was so… not part of the original text that I was worried it was a sign that the rest of the movie would stray too far. Probably wouldn’t have the same impact on somebody not familiar with the original story.
I gotta agree here. I liked the film but Cage took me out of it at points. Some of the other choices that were made for the film I was okay with. I thought the end was pretty good, I liked the special effects.
I liked the film overall, including Nic’s scenery-chewing. I’m in the camp that thought Nic peaked with “Vampire’s Kiss,” and was glad to see him going back to his over-the-top histrionics. Although the movie definitely strayed from the details of the source material, I thought it was very true to the *spirit *of the source material. As others have noted above, I did think of “The Thing” more than once. And I do hope this does herald the beginning of a new HPL trilogy. That would be awesome.
By the bye, I rented it from RedBox. Never did see it available in an actual theater, or I would have gone.
Rented it online, mrAru and I watched it and more or less enjoyed it. It stuck with the sense of the original, but was indeed very reminiscent of The Thing perhaps blended with some Stephen King on the side.
I have to admit, I liked the period piece version of Call of Cthluhu. Or however it is spelled =) I can never get it right.