The 2005 film adaptation of “The Call of Cthulhu” done by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society is an admirable attempt at creating a period, silent-film retelling of the famous H.P. Lovecraft story.
Although a very well-done endeavor, I find the mix of modern and silent film-making techniques to be distracting. An “either/or” philosophy would have served better. Generally, the silent-film techniques employed serve the film well, but we are taken out of the story by improbable overhead camera shots and other modern techniques. This technique, called “mythoscope” by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society should probably end here. It isn’t horrible, but it uses too many modern camera angles and other effects to suit my tastes. It’s cool on paper, but the execution leaves me wanting.
From a story-telling perspective, it does not elucidate the written story all that well - there’s a reason filmmaker upon filmmaker have passed upon this film - the three disparate locales in the story make it hard to film a narrative whole. I’m afraid that the HPLHS adaptation doesn’t succeed, either.
That being said, it is a short film. If you’re a H.P. Lovecraft fan, of course you should give this a viewing and decide for yourself.
Wikipedia article
IMDB.com article
The "making of" piece is worth watching to see what they had to work with. Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best Lovecraft films, IMO, although I can understand about the 1920s era vs. modern era techniques.
I can't remember the details exactly, but Guillermo del Toro was involved in a Lovecraft project and has since backed out as he thought it was going to require at least an R or a NC-17 rating and the studio balked.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I've seen some LovecraftIAN films, but other than a bad SYFY project, I don't think I've seen any other direct adaptations - this very well may be the best of breed (it certainly is better than the SYFY movie - can't remember the title).