Cthulhu (dir. Daniel Gildark, 2007)
H.P. Lovecraft is difficult to adapt. Most of his stories are essentially extremely eccentric guidebooks to New England with the occasional mind shattering cosmic horror making an appearance. They are light on character, memorable dialogue, and heavy on antiquated prose and racism. I enjoy them, but recognize they are as flawed as they are fascinating. For these reasons and more, filmmakers typically approach Lovecraft’s work in an orthogonal manner. They shoehorn in references to his mythology or imagine the horrors that his neurasthenic narrators struggle to describe to varying degrees of success.
Daniel Gildark’s 2007 Cthulhu, adapted from “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” is an interesting if not entirely successful attempt to do something slightly different. The core story remains the same–a man visits a seaside town that is under the undue influence of monstrous beings–but instead of reflecting Lovecraft’s fears of miscegenation, the story here reflects the anxieties of a gay man during the waning days of the Bush administration.
The protagonist Russell Marsh is a professor of history, returning to his tiny hometown in the Pacific Northwest to attend the funeral of his mother. His father, styled like Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven’s Gate cult, is the head of a new religious movement that emphasizes aquatic symbolism and rebirth. His sister and his childhood best friend are more welcoming, but the small town is more oppressive than it was even during his youth.
The film’s plot hits several of the same beats as the original. A homeless man, plied with alcohol, provides exposition, just as in the original novella, for instance, although he lacks the insane rendering of colloquial speech that Lovecraft inflicts for pages and pages on the reader. However, the derivations are outgrowths of the protagonist’s homosexuality and his past there. He is pursued and ultimately raped by a cultist played bizarrely enough by Tori Spelling in one of the rare instances of female-on-male sexual assault you’ll see in a film. He hooks up with his old friend, but tragedy ensues in a manner unlike anything in Lovecraft’s largely sexless fiction.
Now, I don’t want to get your hopes up too much. This film is interesting rather than good. The quality of acting varies wildly from scene to scene. A young liquor store clerk looking for her missing brother is particularly awful. The dialogue leaves much to be desired. While the director tries some rather impressive shots for a low budget production, it rarely adds anything to either the mood or the narrative. Also, you’re not seeing any Deep Ones which I realize is a dealbreaker for a lot of you, but sea monsters from the fathomless depths cost money that is better spent on a couple of days’ pay for a Beverly Hills 90210 alum. Still, if you want to see a Lovecraft adaptation like no other I know of, this is your best bet.
October 8, 2018
oliveresque 