John Carpenter made an unofficial trilogy of movies he called his “Apocalypse Trilogy,” and I had seen two of them so far. The first was the most famous and arguably best of the bunch, The Thing. That one had a sci-fi bent. Next up was Prince of Darkness, a movie with a more satanic element leading towards the end times. Finally, there was In the Mouth of Madness, the one I said I woild save for last as it looked the trippiest.
As it turns out, that one went all Lovecraftian. I got to it before it left Shudder and presumably AMC+.
The movie opens with one Dr. Wrenn (David Warner, who sadly died the same day I type this up) is off to see psychiatric patient John Trent (Sam Neill). Trent has drawn crosses all over every surface in his room, including himself. He has a story about all that. John worked as an insurance investigator, the man who made sure no one ever scams the company out of a settlement. He’s sent to find a missing horror novelist, one Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). Cane is hugely popular, to the point where his fans seems to commit acts of violence when they can’t get ahold of his latest novel In the Mouth of Madness. Heck, Trent witnesses one fan threaten him with an ax while he is getting the assignment over lunch. However, he gets the idea that Cane is in a New Hampshire town, located when he pieces together the covers of Cane’s novels, a town that does not exist on any map.
Trent then heads off with Cane’s editor Linda (Julie Carmen), but there are odd happenings before the pair can even get to the small town of Hobb’s End, a town littered with references to Cane’s novels. Trent, through dumb luck, seems to keep missing these things, but Linda isn’t so lucky, and it seems to be affecting her mind. She does read all of Cane’s novels since she is his editor. Trent, he’d never even heard of the man before, But it does seem as if Cane is an omnipresent figure in the town, and there is insanity in the minds of the residents and that’s before strange monsters, vicious dogs, and the universe itself acting strangely…almost as if Cane is less author and more god. What is going on?
So, the basis of Lovecraftian horror is that there are beings in the universe that are malevolent, beyond human comprehension, and at best apathetic to the humans they encounter. Just looking at such a being would cause insanity in the witness. That does seem to be the case here, and Carpenter does a good job of gradually ratcheting up the crazy as he goes. Trent is a rational man, and even though the audience knows from the start that he will be locked in an asylum before the movie is over, the movie demonstrates how far he’ll fall before the closing credits run. He’s a man of the physical world, not one who believes in ghosts and goblins and the like. But as the movie grinds on, it becomes clear that this is a world where Trent can’t hope to understand what’s happening around him.
That said, this isn’t quite on the same level as The Thing, but what of Carpenter’s filmography is outside of Halloween? I say this as a fan: this movie is quite good, but not quite great. However, it doesn’t have to be. Does it make sense? Well, as much as any sort of Lovecraftian horror makes sense it does, and yes, this is an end of the world…but not necessarily the end of ours. The movie plays quite a bit with the nature of reality. Trent believes in what is physical and real. But, he’s also a character in a movie. So really, this one has some layers, but it still isn’t as good as The Thing.
Grade: B
0 Comments