Avis Metacritic

In the Mouth of Madness is a thinking person's horror picture that dares to be as cerebral as it is visceral.

All in all, In the Mouth of Madness is a fun, clever horror picture, full of creepy crawlies, things that go bump in the night, and references to everyone from H.P. Lovecraft to Dario Argento.

In the Mouth of Madness has enough menace and novelty to please fans of Mr. Carpenter's horror films (among them The Fog, Christine and Halloween) without the wider interest of an enchanting parable like Starman, which he also directed. Still, this is a film with the temerity to think big, if only for the magnitude of the wickedness it invokes.

The script by New Line's head of production, Michael de Luca, does not allow Carpenter free range, nevertheless he manages some neat flourishes of his own, handling the narrative twists and unsettling sfx sequences with customary skill.

One wonders how In the Mouth of Madness might have turned out if the script had contained even a little more wit and ambition.

In the end the most interesting thing about In the Mouth of Madness is its weird relationship with itself -- its cheesy horror celebrating the power of cheesy horror, while pretending to be appalled.

Look for bloody axes, grotesquely disfigured zombies, and creepy visions — much of it bloatedly self-indulgent and a small part wicked funny about the influence of guys like Stephen King/Sutter Cane who write words read by people who don’t read anything else, or maybe don’t read at all but only go to movies like this one.

Fans can console themselves with some disorientating creepiness as half-glimpsed monsters swarm and the fine melodramatic performances. But as the film descends into a babbling wreck you start to wonder whatever became of the directing talent that gave us Dark Star, Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween and The Thing.

In the Mouth of Madness is firmly lodged in the armpit of boredom. [03 Feb 1995, p.55]

A bewildering, boring assembly of rock-video-surreal nightmare sequences with more repetitive episodes than Groundhog Day.