Commissioned by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, the organization which brought the infamous Call of Cthulhu to the screen back in 2005, this ambitious new adaptation was shot using the "Mythoscope" process ("a mix of modern and vintage techniques", as stated on the promotional website) in a bid to create "the most authentic and faithful screen adaptation of a Lovecraft story yet attempted". Oblivious to the monumental contradiction involved in trying to remain "faithful" to Lovecraft's elusive tale of madness, the makers of this film have managed instead to undermine, and even compromise the impregnable opacity of the Cthulhu mythos through an overbid of naive imagery meant to ape 1930s horror films. The end result is at once a commendable effort (in terms paper-mâché) and a very dubious achievement (in terms of adaptation).
Gaps in representation - Exhibit A
R'lyeh as expressionistic nightmare (The Call of Cthulhu)
R'lyeh as expressionistic nightmare (The Call of Cthulhu)
Gaps in representation - Exhibit BR'lyeh as postmodern fantasy (South Park, S14E13)
(or how Lovecraftian tales elude depiction)
Members of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society are people of obvious reverence and dedication to the grand master's work. Unfortunately, their very enterprise is meaningless, as the Lovecraftian mythos will forever elude description. A case in point is the feature-length adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness, which takes great pride in trying to recapture the gloomy atmosphere of the New England countryside by using elaborate models and lovingly painted backgrounds. Where it fails is in its naive depiction of the mi-gos and their famed "brain cylinders". Up until now, these creatures and contraptions existed only as feverish scraps of dreams salvaged from the tale of a madman. But now that they have taken definite shape, their mystique has all but vanished. The resulting film, no matter how carefully crafted it is, remains the umpteenth proof that one cannot successfully adapt Lovecraft to the screen... unless your name is Stuart Gordon and you stay as far as possible from the source material.
Things always look scarier from afar
What is a mi-go? Let us first consider this pressing question when trying to appraise the relevance of the present film. According to Lovecraft, a mi-go is "a great crab with a lot of pyramided fleshy rings or knots of thick, ropy stuff covered with feelers where a man's head would be." But according to the makers of this film, it is something much less intriguing, and much more rigidly delineated, something that seems to leave the realm of imagination the second it lands onscreen. Now, the very vagueness of the description above is perhaps its greatest literary strength, for it puts the reader at odds against his own sense of wonder. It also insures a lasting legacy for the creatures thus depicted by making them a million things at once, as many things as there are people to try and imagine their features. In that regard, the author's deliberate use of vague and mysterious words such as "stuff", "self-luminous", "things", "growths" and "half-polypous" is meant precisely to create a gap in representation between the readers of his stories, the rationale being that the sight of the monsters depicted is too much for the human mind to process. Hence, remaining "faithful" to Lovecraft can never amount to positing any representation of his words as the definitive one.
After all, there is no definite shape for the limbs of Cthulian creatures, nor is there a shape for the impossible angles covering the lost city of R'lyeh. As for the colour out of space, it is one that varies from reader to reader, boggling the mind of anyone who would attempt to imagine it, for it is, by definition, unimaginable. The colour is perhaps the best example of Lovecraftian excess, as it quite explicitly fails to fit in the spectrum of human understanding. For those unfamiliar with the short story of the same name, the colour out of space is one that possess no equivalent on Earth. That is why it is dubbed "colour". It is for lack of a more precise term. Hence, if one were to show the colour using Earthly means, they would immediately betray its nature. And so, we can see how the embodiment of anything Lovecraft transforms it into something lesser than what it was, namely a glimpse of otherworldly horror.
While the writer often offers elaborate descriptions of sets and moods, he rarely gives his monsters too many details so as to preserve the unholy mystique surrounding their apparition. Unlike Homeric tales, where every single element is rendered using wordy descriptions of epic length, Lovecraft often circumvents monstrous depictions. Which basically means that, these creatures he mentions cannot be described accurately, given their alien shape and unimaginable features which push observers beyond the limits of sanity. That said, they shouldn't be described at length because as many things horrific, seeing them amounts to much less than imagining them. And this is particularly true here, as the mi-gos are so carefully crafted by the nerds at the helm so as to alienate the imagination of all who would rather revel in their own personal fears than to partake in the fears imposed by others. And ultimately, it is a very egotistic pursuit to try and create "definitive" incarnations of literary creatures such as the the flying devils from the present short story, or the orks and dwarves of The Lord of the Rings, which become breathing stereotypes under the thumb of Peter Jackson and crew. And thus the literary mystique crumbles under the weight of rigid images meant to crystallize their constantly fluctuating meaning.
Written using the first person, Lovecraft's stories all share the intimate tone necessary to convey madness as a quintessentially personal experience. Monstrous occurrences, feverish dreams and uneasy impressions, all are detailed as if right in front of the reader. Insofar as film rather takes the "invisible" approach to the narrator, it contributes to the deconstruction of Lovecraft's entire enterprise. In that regard, it would be somewhat of a crude mistake to equate voice-over narration with literary narration, as the former is involved in an antagonist relationship with the images it accompanies. At best, voice-over narration is a worthy complement to the images onscreen. At worst, it will completely ruin an author's attempt at cultivating ambiguity (see Blade Runner). But here, it is merely a way to convey a false sense of faithfulness to the story. It does not add anything more to an adaptation that has shed the diary mode of storytelling as soon as it chose to emulate the theatrical techniques of early Hollywood. What is thus found lacking is the personal "experience" of vision conveyed by Lovecraft's characters and which helps locate the mythos outside the realm of natural perception, and into the realm of madness. Which is something that only Brakhage or other such talented experimental filmmakers can hope to achieve, by equating the camera not to an eye per se, but a mind's eye. After all, while Lovecraft often privileges naturalistic depictions of his sets, he always manages to touch on something alien whose experience will forever remain out of grasp. And while it is relatively easy to convey the sense of something alien with words, or the absence thereof, the same cannot be said of the invisible camera, which is naturalistic by default in its framing of reality. That said, it would take quite a supplementary effort to allow it to convey any form of "personal" realism. And that effort, I'm sorry to say, remains far beyond the reach of the filmmakers at work here.
Fancy marquee posters and dubious gimmicks such as "Mythoscope"
are only meant to hide the fact Lovecraft adaptations are completely
absurd...unless they feature blonde bombshells having their pussy
licked by severed heads.
Koodos for attempting the impossible
While I insist strongly here on the foolishness of slavishly bringing Lovecraft to the screen, I must admit that Sean Branney's film does boast some undeniable craftsmanship qualities, mostly where art direction and set design are concerned. The lovingly crafted sets meant to depict the thick forests of Vermont, with their recessed caves and hooked corpses, the stuffy interiors of the Akeley farm, with their long shadows drawn over cloaked figures, everything in sight is in its rightful place. As for the more high-minded concepts included in the film, such as the plane ride and aerial confrontation with the mi-gos, as well as the otherworldly contraption meant to project the consciousness of the encased brains, they all appear just naive enough to convey the candid sense of wonder derived from early horror films. This prompts me to remark, as I did when I saw Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, that the creators at work here have done a great "nerd's job" of bringing the film's universe to the screen. Unfortunately for Branney and crew, their source material is far more involving and impenetrable than Jackson's, making the ordeal of adapting it nearly insurmountable.
The photography may be sharp and the lightning quite befitting the atmosphere the producers were aiming for. But the direction and general imagery are so conventional, so naive, as to completely miss the mark when it comes to creating a spiritual filiation with the source material at hand. After all, other such inspirational films mentioned by the crew include Dracula and Frankenstein, both of which are based on novels which lend themselves much more readily to the kind of theatrical adaptation attempted here than Lovecraft's stories. And this also informs part of the shapelessness of the work, which tries too hard to peg down the source material to an epoch which it transcended even when it was released. And this doesn't seem to stem from a lack of Lovecraftian knowledge however, but a lack of film knowledge. That said, German expressionism or French impressionism might have proved a better, albeit harder to replicate, technique to convey Lovecraft's word onscreen. At this point, I'd like to refer back to The Call of Cthulhu, where the engrossing images of R'lyeh and it's "impossible angles" (which seem to point directly to German expressionism) are imbued with a distinctly Caligari-esque quality (see image above). As for the elaborate sets created for the present film, they fail both to transcend their nature and to add anything meaningful to the mood of the film.
Crafting a contemporary reworking wouldn't have been such a bad idea either, considering that the story itself was perfect in its original, literary iteration. One shouldn't be burdened with slavish adaptations. One should instead demand that the author upgrades on the source material in order to create a distinct cultural item than that from which it came. But seeing how the producers are grouped under the name "historical society", their dedication to the exactitude of facts must be precise, and so their artistic temperament is diluted in purely intellectual concerns. Which points out to a blatant contradiction in their work, that of appraising Lovecraft's work in a purely scientific, rational fashion, whereas it is one that should be depicted in a expressionistic fashion. By choosing to opt for the candor of early Hollywood cinema, the authors are effectively pointing to their own candor, which finds its quintessential expression in the narrow artistic enterprise within which they have tried to cram Lovecraft's otherworldly, ever-expanding genius.
2/5 A well-made, useless film, and a slavish adaptation of the classic H.P. Lovecraft tale.
Things always look scarier from afarFor those unfamiliar with the eponymous short story from which the film derives, I shall provide a short synopsis. Following an historical flood in the farmlands of Vermont, many locals report sightings of weird carcasses floating amidst tree trunks and debris. While skeptical at first, folklorist Albert Wilmarth eventually engages in a correspondence with one of these locals, aging farmer Henry Akeley, who vies to substantiate his own sightings with material evidence (photos of alien footprints and one strange artifact). After receiving a certain number of letters from an increasingly alarmed Akeley, Wilmarth eventually receives a formal invitation to share in the bucolic splendors of Vermont in order to better grasp the extent of the alien invasion. Obviously, this is all a trap, a trap set up by the deviant mi-gos, a sentient race of flying fungi from outer space hellbent on hiding their existence from humans. Naively enough, Wilmarth falls into that trap, but manages to elude the creatures' grasp momentarily. He then proceeds to figure out how they have harvested Akeley's brain using a custom preservation cylinder and replaced his body with that of a dummy. He also overhears talks of a strange ritual meant to open a rift between Earth and the mi-gos' home planet of Yuggoth (Pluto). Rushing to the scene, he ultimately tries to save Earth from invasion.
After all, there is no definite shape for the limbs of Cthulian creatures, nor is there a shape for the impossible angles covering the lost city of R'lyeh. As for the colour out of space, it is one that varies from reader to reader, boggling the mind of anyone who would attempt to imagine it, for it is, by definition, unimaginable. The colour is perhaps the best example of Lovecraftian excess, as it quite explicitly fails to fit in the spectrum of human understanding. For those unfamiliar with the short story of the same name, the colour out of space is one that possess no equivalent on Earth. That is why it is dubbed "colour". It is for lack of a more precise term. Hence, if one were to show the colour using Earthly means, they would immediately betray its nature. And so, we can see how the embodiment of anything Lovecraft transforms it into something lesser than what it was, namely a glimpse of otherworldly horror.
While the writer often offers elaborate descriptions of sets and moods, he rarely gives his monsters too many details so as to preserve the unholy mystique surrounding their apparition. Unlike Homeric tales, where every single element is rendered using wordy descriptions of epic length, Lovecraft often circumvents monstrous depictions. Which basically means that, these creatures he mentions cannot be described accurately, given their alien shape and unimaginable features which push observers beyond the limits of sanity. That said, they shouldn't be described at length because as many things horrific, seeing them amounts to much less than imagining them. And this is particularly true here, as the mi-gos are so carefully crafted by the nerds at the helm so as to alienate the imagination of all who would rather revel in their own personal fears than to partake in the fears imposed by others. And ultimately, it is a very egotistic pursuit to try and create "definitive" incarnations of literary creatures such as the the flying devils from the present short story, or the orks and dwarves of The Lord of the Rings, which become breathing stereotypes under the thumb of Peter Jackson and crew. And thus the literary mystique crumbles under the weight of rigid images meant to crystallize their constantly fluctuating meaning.
Written using the first person, Lovecraft's stories all share the intimate tone necessary to convey madness as a quintessentially personal experience. Monstrous occurrences, feverish dreams and uneasy impressions, all are detailed as if right in front of the reader. Insofar as film rather takes the "invisible" approach to the narrator, it contributes to the deconstruction of Lovecraft's entire enterprise. In that regard, it would be somewhat of a crude mistake to equate voice-over narration with literary narration, as the former is involved in an antagonist relationship with the images it accompanies. At best, voice-over narration is a worthy complement to the images onscreen. At worst, it will completely ruin an author's attempt at cultivating ambiguity (see Blade Runner). But here, it is merely a way to convey a false sense of faithfulness to the story. It does not add anything more to an adaptation that has shed the diary mode of storytelling as soon as it chose to emulate the theatrical techniques of early Hollywood. What is thus found lacking is the personal "experience" of vision conveyed by Lovecraft's characters and which helps locate the mythos outside the realm of natural perception, and into the realm of madness. Which is something that only Brakhage or other such talented experimental filmmakers can hope to achieve, by equating the camera not to an eye per se, but a mind's eye. After all, while Lovecraft often privileges naturalistic depictions of his sets, he always manages to touch on something alien whose experience will forever remain out of grasp. And while it is relatively easy to convey the sense of something alien with words, or the absence thereof, the same cannot be said of the invisible camera, which is naturalistic by default in its framing of reality. That said, it would take quite a supplementary effort to allow it to convey any form of "personal" realism. And that effort, I'm sorry to say, remains far beyond the reach of the filmmakers at work here.
Fancy marquee posters and dubious gimmicks such as "Mythoscope"are only meant to hide the fact Lovecraft adaptations are completely
absurd...unless they feature blonde bombshells having their pussy
licked by severed heads.
While I insist strongly here on the foolishness of slavishly bringing Lovecraft to the screen, I must admit that Sean Branney's film does boast some undeniable craftsmanship qualities, mostly where art direction and set design are concerned. The lovingly crafted sets meant to depict the thick forests of Vermont, with their recessed caves and hooked corpses, the stuffy interiors of the Akeley farm, with their long shadows drawn over cloaked figures, everything in sight is in its rightful place. As for the more high-minded concepts included in the film, such as the plane ride and aerial confrontation with the mi-gos, as well as the otherworldly contraption meant to project the consciousness of the encased brains, they all appear just naive enough to convey the candid sense of wonder derived from early horror films. This prompts me to remark, as I did when I saw Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, that the creators at work here have done a great "nerd's job" of bringing the film's universe to the screen. Unfortunately for Branney and crew, their source material is far more involving and impenetrable than Jackson's, making the ordeal of adapting it nearly insurmountable.
The photography may be sharp and the lightning quite befitting the atmosphere the producers were aiming for. But the direction and general imagery are so conventional, so naive, as to completely miss the mark when it comes to creating a spiritual filiation with the source material at hand. After all, other such inspirational films mentioned by the crew include Dracula and Frankenstein, both of which are based on novels which lend themselves much more readily to the kind of theatrical adaptation attempted here than Lovecraft's stories. And this also informs part of the shapelessness of the work, which tries too hard to peg down the source material to an epoch which it transcended even when it was released. And this doesn't seem to stem from a lack of Lovecraftian knowledge however, but a lack of film knowledge. That said, German expressionism or French impressionism might have proved a better, albeit harder to replicate, technique to convey Lovecraft's word onscreen. At this point, I'd like to refer back to The Call of Cthulhu, where the engrossing images of R'lyeh and it's "impossible angles" (which seem to point directly to German expressionism) are imbued with a distinctly Caligari-esque quality (see image above). As for the elaborate sets created for the present film, they fail both to transcend their nature and to add anything meaningful to the mood of the film.
The Whisperer in Darkness is a monumental achievement in set
design. Here,we see the scale model used to depict the Vermont
mountainsides.
design. Here,we see the scale model used to depict the Vermont
mountainsides.
Crafting a contemporary reworking wouldn't have been such a bad idea either, considering that the story itself was perfect in its original, literary iteration. One shouldn't be burdened with slavish adaptations. One should instead demand that the author upgrades on the source material in order to create a distinct cultural item than that from which it came. But seeing how the producers are grouped under the name "historical society", their dedication to the exactitude of facts must be precise, and so their artistic temperament is diluted in purely intellectual concerns. Which points out to a blatant contradiction in their work, that of appraising Lovecraft's work in a purely scientific, rational fashion, whereas it is one that should be depicted in a expressionistic fashion. By choosing to opt for the candor of early Hollywood cinema, the authors are effectively pointing to their own candor, which finds its quintessential expression in the narrow artistic enterprise within which they have tried to cram Lovecraft's otherworldly, ever-expanding genius.
2/5 A well-made, useless film, and a slavish adaptation of the classic H.P. Lovecraft tale.
