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58 out of 78 people found the following review useful: Yet another NON-LOVECRAFT movie, 20 September 2007 Author: digitalshark from United States
I really wanted to like this, especially with the glut of direct to video adaptations of Lovecraft stories (Beyond the Wall of Sleep etc) that are essentially student project level non-movies. But this is yet another example of a film that heavily relies on Lovecraft and yet totally jettisons any real relation to the author or his works, much less the sensibility behind them. It owes more to The Shadow Over Innsmouth than anything, and unfortunately that world was already realized in far better (yet still in woefully inadequate) fashion in "Dagon." To someone who loves Lovecraft as much as I, it's rather insulting this film is called "Cthulhu." There are ideas the writer and director were far more interested in, such as the main character's confused sexuality, than anything written by Lovecraft. So, why not drop the illusion of being a Lovecraft adaptation, and simply make the film that was there without him, since little in this film relates much to his writing? Answer? Because if you use his name and the titles of his works you gain free publicity and legitimacy. You will also let down legions of HPL fans because once again someone has made a film that seems to think it's own very uninteresting and pedestrian ideas have any place mixed in with the cosmic horror of Lovecraft. And worse, viewers who don't know HPL will once again be left with the opinion that "Gee, I guess he wasn't that good a writer." And with this sad example, you can probably add "Was Lovecraft gay?" to those questions.
48 out of 70 people found the following review useful: Disappointed, 15 June 2007 Author: SteveSeattle from Seattle, WA
I was just at the "world premiere" of Cthulhu at the Seattle Int'l Film Festival tonight so this comment IS actually about the correct film. Someone connected to the film previously commented that some posts are not relevant or are about some other film - and gave a score of 10 while at it.To be blunt: Cthulhu is not a good film. I had high hopes going in, as I do with all films shown at SIFF, but I was disappointed throughout and I know others were as well. From the mediocre-to-outright-horrible acting (except, ironically, for Tori Spelling who plays a sexy, baby-seeking blonde), to the lackluster script, to the 2 hour running time (note to director: you should be GLAD you were forced to reduce it to this length).... starting at the half-way point I could not wait for it to be over. Had the film been written and shot as a tongue-in-cheek comedic version of the story with intentional sarcasm, etc, it might have worked. But the combination of trying to make a serious film, plus the bad acting, makes Cthulhu not quite worth the celluloid it's printed on.Kudos for Gildark for making ANY first film, especially because this one was made in my neck of the woods (and my neck of the woods needs more films made in it). But unfortunately it didn't work out - and Cthulhu likely doesn't have any chance of being commercially viable. If you're a Lovecraft fanatic you might have a different take altogether, but your numbers are probably too low to make much of a difference to help the film succeed. The rest of us just want/ed to be entertained by a good film. Will need to look elsewhere.
43 out of 68 people found the following review useful: Where's the Lovecraft?, 18 June 2007 Author: Filmetta Baskin from United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
OK, I'm a long-time reader of H.P. Lovecraft, and I'll admit I have been disappointed again and again with film adaptations of his works. But this extremely loose adaptation of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" would have Mr. Lovecraft spinning in his grave. The protagonist is a gay professor who travels the long two hours to his estranged mother's funeral. His homosexuality takes up a disproportionately large part of the movie, and I'm not quite sure why. Does it MATTER that he is gay? Isn't it rather cliché and a negative stereotype to show him in bed with a "street kid" and to include random Gus Van Sant-ish scenes of moody (and way too clean) rent boys on the "mean streets" of Seattle at the beginning of the film? What does that have to do with Fish-Creatures and Unutterable Horror!!? And why is he hooking up with his (straight) childhood buddy halfway through the movie and indulging in a loving sex scene with lots of back-patting and kissy-face when he is supposed to be investigating the suspicious disappearances of the locals at the hands of eldritch, nefarious creatures? Why was I subjected to a scene of the two friends as teenagers jacking off together at sunset under a pier? Where's Cthulhu??? I feel like I went to see "Brokeback Beach" instead of a chilling thrilling tale of the macabre. Who CARES if the guy is gay? I don't care! He can do what he wants on his own time! I just wanted to see scary stuff. Total monster screen time for this picture clocked in at about 30 seconds, unless you count Tori Spelling, then maybe you can bump it up to 15 minutes. Sigh...I don't know what these idiots were thinking. I won't even begin to relay the plot, because there wasn't one. I read a quote from the filmmakers that said they "didn't know anything about the horror genre and had no respect for it when they started this project." Well then, why did you make the film? Why choose Lovecraft to massacre?I feel like I lost two hours of my life yesterday.
15 out of 19 people found the following review useful: Weird, but never quite comes together., 27 August 2008 Author: CorrinMcCool from United States
I really wanted to like this movie. I'm a big fan of the Cthulu mythos, and the preview actually looked pretty good.Unfortunately, this is yet another disappointing release from HERE TV.The frustrating thing is that the movie almost works. There are a lot of wonderfully creepy little details: the bizarre check out girl who passes the protagonist a warning note, the strange kids saying "I knew you'd be back", the crazy things being reported on the news.Unfortunately, the film never really gels. I never felt scared, or even particularly interested in what was going to happen to the main character. About half way though the film, the plot breaks down almost completely and weird random events seem to take over everything.The film was at least mildly interesting in a "what sort of weird stuff will they throw out next" sort of way, but never really worked as a story.Cinematography varies from some very nice shots of the ocean to some very amateurish hand held stuff.
21 out of 33 people found the following review useful: The Thing That Should Not Be, 15 August 2008 Author: roboto-arigato from United States
This is a terrible adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The acting was weak, the direction was weak, and the original content has been butchered. I saw this movie at the Seattle International Film Festival, and that was the worst mistake I made all weekend. If you want to see a film based on "Shadow Over Innsmouth," Stuart Gordon's "Dagon" is mediocre, but it's certainly better than this botched attempt. If you want to see "Call of Cthulhu," the silent film adaptation is great. But this? This film is a waste of time. I suspect the people who are writing 10 out of 10 scores are either friends of the director or shills who worked on the film. There is no earthly way this film is a 10. It stinks like a rotten pile of fish.
6 out of 7 people found the following review useful: Total disappointment, 10 April 2009 Author: azraeliz (azrael@simnet.is) from Reykjavik, Iceland
When I heard about this movie last year I was very excited, maybe this time they would make a good Lovecraftian movie. I've been a fan Lovecraft for over 20 years now, and have read all of his stories and seen almost all the movies based upon his work. And as a general rule, those movies have been pretty bad, with 2 or three exceptions. But lets talk about this movie. It's based loosely upon on "Shadow over Innsmouth". the good things about the movie are the underlying dread and the nihilistic view upon current world affairs. The settings are good(a gay main character is an interesting twist) and the filmmakers manage to make the movie look creepy in few placesBut...the bad things are too many to ignore. The acting is very bad, the main protagonist gets very annoying as the movie goes on. The editing makes film disjointed in places. The photography is like on a America funniest home video and the script is badly focused. After 40 minutes you cant wait for the film to end. And I must mention Jason Cottle wig/hairpiece at the beginning of the movie, it's atrociously bad and very funny to look at. I realize that the movie was made on tight budget and I respect the filmmakers for trying to make the best movie they could. I see the potential but they are not there yet.For me this movie was a total disappointment, because i made the mistake of having high expectations for it.
5 out of 7 people found the following review useful: ''Jurrasic Park'' with no dinosaurs, 6 June 2009 Author: CanEvrenol from Istanbul, Turkey
I was very impressed with the first hour of this movie. I thought.. finally, a very good Lovecraft film. But where is the Cthulhu monster??!!!! This is like a Jurassic Park remake with no dinosaurs. I was so disappointed. Especially with that stupid song at the end! I mean how misplaced a tune can be! I see the final music at the end as a warm welcoming and letting go feeling.. as the protagonist lets go and accepts his Cthulhu identity. But still... Hello??? ..The Lovecraft audience is expecting something much much more different here. A Lovecraft story is, above all, about those that lurk beyond. A glimpse is not enough Lovecraft bluntly shows us these creatures or entities whatever they are. This is what makes him unique. This is also what makes him not taken very seriously during his life time. And now this movie completely ignores that aspect - which is like betraying Lovecraft, n regard to using the name Cthulhu as the film's title.I am sure the director and the producer of this film are not trying to exploit the Lovecraft fans but unfortunately that's what it comes down to. I mean, at the very least, this film should not have been named ''Cthulhu'' man. This is wrong. The gay theme is OK. Actually it fits very well considering the ''secret identity'' theme of the Inssmouth people and Cthulu cult. But overall, this film turned out to be a rather heartbreaking experience for me.I bet Lovecraft himself would be most unsatisfied with this film.
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful: Smell like a rotten fish, 26 April 2009 Author: mhamill from United States
Word among my wife's circle of friends was that the 2007 movie Cthulhu was wretchedly bad. If you are bad movie fanatics like we are, this was reason to place the movie on our Netflix queue. No question about it, Cthulhu is a stinker of a movie. However, it languishes somewhere between mediocre and abysmal. I have seen much worse than this, but certainly not recently.Perhaps I would rate this clunker lower if it were not that some of the actors actually seem to be trying. Jason Cottle plays Russ, a reputedly brilliant university professor in the Pacific Northwest who is reluctantly drawn home because of the untimely passing of his mother. That and there is the small matter that Armageddon is at hand. While we see him driving home to the funeral, we hear on the radio all these terrible things about the end of the world, like rising sea levels and global anarchy. Not much of it is actually borne out on film though because that would, like, cost money, although the budget was big enough to include one overturned car.Russ turns out to be gay, which is fine by him, but not so fine with his weird dysfunctional family. Russ's domineering father is particularly unhappy with his sexual orientation but as we learn later it is not because he is particularly homophobic. Nor does he seem particularly broken up by the passing of his spouse. Russ's sister Dannie (Cara Buono) tries to play family peacemaker, but everyone at the old homestead seems very concerned about Russ passing on his DNA to another generation. That's pretty hard when the idea of making love to a woman gives you the hives.Russ does find himself rather curious when one evening he sees a row of hooded priests, looking like they came out of The Da Vinci Code, climbing out of boats and into an old warehouse along the wharf. Curiosity leads him inside where he finds outlined on chalk on the floor the names of many of the townspeople. What could it possibly mean other than they were being cheap? Should we care? For someone who seems to want to rush back to academia he seems to ask many questions and spends inordinate amounts of time in and under creepy warehouses. Part of his motivation for hanging around is to catch up with an old family friend, whom he conveniently seduces. Through his friend, he learns about a mysterious book that could explain all the weird things going on in town. A clerk at a convenience store warns him to stay away from the old warehouse by the wharf. However, if he is crazy enough to investigate the place would be please look for her younger brother who disappeared some years earlier? It turns out what Russ really has to worry about is Tori Spelling. Tori plays Susan, the friend who allegedly harbors the old book that explains the weird things Russ is witnessing. Tori's presence in a movie is almost an imprimatur of its badness. She is sort of like Adrienne Barbeau's was in movies a few decades back, and she comes with Barbeau's ample cleavage. Susan has a husband who is conveniently paraplegic and sterile. In fact, his visit is a setup because Susan is on a mission to become impregnated. Of course not just anyone will do, as we learn later. It's got to be Russ.So Susan plays the role of hussy. This one seduction scene is very strange and is perhaps the comic highlight of this lowlife movie, rendering what is probably the silliest scene filmed in the last decade. Fortunately for bad movie buffs, there is plenty more here to wallow over. The movie is tangentially related to H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories wherein Cthulhu apparently is a pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings. No such critter is manifested here of course, as there was no budget for that, but there is a sort of Swamp Thing scene at the very end of the movie. Russ's father and his kind live near an island off Antarctica and spend most of their long lives in the ocean. They apparently manifest as humans from time to time, and use human females to procreate. Yeah, this is pretty convoluted but it explains why Susan is putting the moves on a gay guy.The movie suffers from the classic symptoms of a bad movie: no budget to speak of, mostly unknown actors, an incoherent script, dialog that doesn't make much sense and a director (Dan Gildark) what doesn't give much of a damn. What's puzzling is that in spite of these problems some of the actors are trying to do something with the material. It is all for naught but perhaps it somewhat immunized them from having careers completely destroyed. Every actor is entitled to at least one clunker. Unfortunately, this one sinks like dead weight.Cthulhu then comes across as something like a Coen Brothers movie if the brothers were drunk while making the film. It is undeniably an odd little movie. Do not spend too much time trying to connect the plot points because you really cannot. Marvel instead that even though this is a really bad movie, it could still be plenty worse.If you like an occasional bad movie though, this is definitely one to add to your list.
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful: Interesting take on the Mythos from a filmmaker apparently unfamiliar with it., 20 April 2009 Author: uke2se-1 from Sweden
It is a sad thing that Lovecraft's writing style lends itself so well to camp and B-flicks and so poorly to artful and complex movies. At least, that is if you are to analyze the movies based on the Mythos. There are very few movies based on Lovecraft's work that surpasses your average B horror movie, and in this case, even though the movie itself looks and feels nothing like a B horror movie, it actually suffers more from it.We are introduced to Professor Russ Marsh, a homosexual. Basically, that's all we ever learn of him, and it's a bit confusing that his sexual orientation takes up so much screen time. Him being gay does tie in with the story, but not to such an extent that the film makers should be forced to remind us of his orientation every five minutes, which is the case in this movie. At the very beginning of the film, the homosexuality bit feels almost a bit fresh for a Lovecraft film, however.Over all, the intro to the movie is very moody and beautifully filmed. The car crash is not really much of a surprise, but it helps set a good atmosphere.Everything falls apart once Russ reaches his home town in Rivermouth (Innsmouth?) county. Russ's father - who appear to be about five years older than Russ - is the leader of some odd cult, and also a horrible actor. He chastises Russ for being gay throughout the movie, and, despite the horrible acting, we are treated to a few nice scenes of a dysfunctional family. The bad acting seems to be the hallmark of Rivermouth county, and with the exception of Russ's childhood friend and soon-to-be lover Mike, the cast's performance ranges from mediocre to dismal.Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Insmouth is picked apart and shuffled freely as the plot unfolds, and it seemed to me that all the good parts from the story were missing. The Shadow Over Insmouth had several set pieces that have been included in previous adaptations, so I can forgive the screenwriter for not including them, but the bits that are there are so few and far between that you never feel the presence of the Mythos, and you certainly don't feel that you're watching a film based off of a Lovecraft story.Connecting global calamities like the melting of the polar caps and the war in the Middle East to the Cthulhu Mythos is a nice touch, but it is never delved into, and feels almost like the movie taking a five minute break while bombarding us with stock footage. Not resolving anything is very Lovecraftian, but this movie doesn't even attempt to create any plot or problems not to resolve. Over all, it feels really empty.The biggest complaint that I have now and that I had when I first heard that this movie was being made, is that the film makers don't really seem interested in the subject matter. The nods to the Cthulhu Mythos in the movie seem stapled on more than anything, and it is quite obvious that no one involved in making the movie had any concept of the Mythos.I suppose that in order to be able to watch any decent Mythos movies I need to keep turning to the HP Lovecraft Historical Society. They may not have any budget, but they have heart and a deep rooted understanding of the source material. I'd recommend watching The Call of Cthulhu by Andrew Leman and the HPLHS any day over this loose adaptation.
3 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Surprisingly good, subtle horror film, 16 May 2009 Author: flightsuit from Pacifica, California
This film may be too good for its own good. In reading the comments here on IMDb, I see that some people really hated it. Having just watched it myself, I feel compelled to offer a counter-point, because I was very pleasantly surprised by many aspects of Cthulhu.I very recently listened to a radio play based on Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsbrook," and Cthulhu does a fine job of updating the story for modern audiences. Is it slavishly faithful to the original material? No. Does the film take great liberties with the story, and change many details? Yes.But it also succeeds as a spooky movie, and really conveys a wonderfully creepy atmosphere with its beautiful cinematography and interesting directing and acting choices.One thing I really respect about Cthulhu is the decision to make the central character a gay man. You might see that in a comedy or some drama about AIDS, but it's not often that anybody making a serious action, sci-fi, or horror film is going to take the risk of portraying their hero as a homosexual. Rest assured this film never lets its hero's sexual orientation get in the way of the story.For that matter, it doesn't even get in the way of the hero winding up in a sex scene with Tori Spelling.With a name like Cthulhu, some folks might be disappointed by the lack of tentacle-faced, ancient, alien-monster-gods in this film, but there really weren't any monsters in the Lovecraft story upon which it's based, other than the creepy townsfolk themselves.I'd love to see the people responsible for this film make more Lovecraft-inspired movies, and perhaps reveal some squid-like, fishy-monsters in one of those, but that's probably too much to hope for.
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