In The Mouth Of Madness, A Review...thing...

"Visit Scenic Hobb's End! Home of the maddeningly horrific works of novelist Sutter Cane!"

...

Actually... don't.

So I was watching In The Mouth Of Madness last week, and I thought it was pretty good! Alright, I'm a John Carpenter fan anyway so there's a touch of bias but bear with me. It was a great film, wonderfully atmospheric little horror, dealing with madness, literature and scary squid-shaped thingees...

And you can't fault a film which starts with your lead character shouting "I'm sorry about the balls!" while being dragged kicking and screaming into a padded cell. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've always been fascinated by H.P. Lovecraft's work, but I've never read any of it. Partly because I'm a visual person, and I love descriptions of monsters in novels. And Mr. Lovecraft's beasties are usually left obscure and not seen (I think), and to me, that's a bit boring. Sometimes I do like to know what I'm meant to be scared of. This film is a big tribute to him and his, complete with the weird foreboding sense of unease. Anyway...

It all starts with a man, no not our loony hero John Trent. But rather another loony. One with an axe. He attacks our John but not before asking "Do You Read Sutter Cane?" So, Sutter Cane's this famous horror writer, right? And his stuff's really good, and like H.P.'s. Only he's gone missing. So his publishers send John Trent with Cane's Editor/ Publicist, Linda Styles, to track him down and get his latest bit of work. The titular In The Mouth of Madness. Then thing's get weird....

It turns out that this place all his books are set in, Hobb's End, is actually real and not a fictional location! And things get weirder, paintings start changing, kid's disappear and Sutter's acting all smug and evil. Mind you, he's played by Jurgen Prochnow so that's understandable. What kind of name is Sutter anyway? Oh, and after reading a bit of the book, Styles is acting a bit off and the villagers are mutating. Poor, John meanwhile, is oblivious to all of this. Or trying to ignore it.

The film is really good with the whole paranoid mood. Everyone seems out to get the pair, from the kiddies with the semi-melty faces to the creepy old biddie who owns the local B&B. And the whole thing about the villagers all claiming to be written by Cane and not being real. As well as the town itself, not supposed to be existing.

It was a good film and the ending, which I will not ruin, was about right. If I say it's part of Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, it should give you an idea of what to expect. But, as much as I liked it, I do wish there had been more of the monsters involved. Yes, there were some in it, but I do like my monsters and I would have loved to have seen some more utilised when scaring Trent. As well, I didn't think there was enough in terms of atmosphere to scare people. Yes it did get me thinking in certain bits, but overall if I want to be atmospherically spooked by something, I really want it to be a bit more there..

Still, I do recommend you see this one. It's a clever film and will make you think about the power of literature and beliefs. The only thing I hope is that Stephenie Meyer doesn't have the same power or end up with a similar cult following with her series...

That and I can find a region 2 copy of this film, it were great and I'd love to see it again...