Beyond the Wall of Sleep

In a normal movie, if your cinematography, lighting, acting, editing, script, sound mix and everything are abysmal, you try to fix them. But in a low budget horror movie, you can claim that's part of the TERRIFYING HORROR. This was badly shot in kind of a faux-Blair Witch style, with ugly high contrast lighting, sub-high school drama acting, jumpy headache-enducing editing, awful dialogue (not even good in that verbose Lovecraft way) and...I don't particularly remember the sound, but I'm sure it was bad. If your movie's mise-en-scene is "shittiness", you're not scary. You're just shitty.

Every time I go to a screening of student films, I wonder about the people who's movies are incompetent even after years of schooling. "Do these people really think they can work in the industry?" I wonder.

Apparently, the answer is yes.

They grow up to be Barrett J. Leigh and Thom Maurer.

Everything about this movie sucked. How can someone even think this was good? The acting made my eyes bleed, the plot was just retarded, and the characters were just so stupid, I wanted them all to just die right then and there. This movie was suppose to be a horror flick, but it ended out being a comedy for me. Me and my friends just laughed at how terrible this movie was. The visual effects were the worst i've ever seen in a movie. Even if the budget wasn't that high, they still could of made it better. I mean come on, honestly, why did they waste movie and time making such a bad movie? I feel bad for everyone who lost an hour and 25 minutes of their life like I did. I want it back!

I found this on the $1 rack at the video store and said "ooh, Lovecraft." and thusly rented what I thought would be a fun movie to scare the crap out of myself with at 2am on a Friday Night.

Well, it scared me all right, but not with the unspeakable horrors usually expected of something with the name H.P. Lovecraft on it, but with some pretty horrific acting, poor sound equalization and camera angles even my mom could pull off. I expected cheese...you can't watch a movie like that and not expect at least 40-50% cheese but sheesh, there's a limit! It might have been OK had it not been for some pretty unimaginative camera work (a low budget is no excuse for doing nothing more than pointing and shooting, unless the budget didn't include bendable wrists or tripods) and the acting was so distracting that I lost track of what the heck was going on.

A couple of handsome guys in the movie didn't quite make up for the "What the *beep* just happened?" feeling when the end credits finally rolled around, leaving me with the thought that I could have bought some M&Ms with that $1 instead.

This movie is very loosely based on Lovecraft's original short story, and that only as a premise upon which the film makers desperately attempted to make a movie. Even the cover art of the DVD was misleading because none of the imagery on it ever appeared in the final version. Anyone who claims that this movie remains faithful to the original short story either read a different story or watched a different movie than I did. There was nothing even remotely resembling Amducious in the original story (where did that come from?), just as there was no rampant blood and guts, no conflict amongst the "alienists" in the asylum, no woman with an exposed brain (rip off of "Hannibal," no doubt), no brains in bottles, and no "evil" entity attempting to break through Sam's body. Taking some creative license is expected, but this movie just blatantly ripped off a Lovecraft premise and turned it into a lame joke. As a Lovecraft reader and fan I was offended and angry that his name and the title of his short story were stapled to this travesty just to sell tickets and DVD's. What a rip off! No, this is not a work of comic film noir genius and wasn't the least bit scary, people. If the DVD had any special features with the directors or producers stating that they were not really serious and that it was supposed to be more like a cheesy serial comedic send up with tongue firmly implanted in cheek I would go along with the joke, but I see no indication that the joke was intentional. Simply stated, this movie just plain sucked, and if I actually believed in such things I would have to say that H. P. Lovecraft is probably spinning in his grave.

so, I've sat through all of ed wood's films, and i'm still convinced this is the worst film I've ever seen, but also the most hilarious. the acting is sub-sub-sub-community theatre/high school acting class on a bad day style, and the directing appears as if the directors (it took two people to be this awful!) just got a bunch of new equipment and computer programs they wanted to screw around with. if you want a good laugh, and some great new catchphrases, and don't mind having no idea what a film is about and sitting through crappy scene upon crappy scene, then check this movie out. as horrible as it is, i almost recommend watching it to be flabbergasted by how awful the three main performances are. check out the wig on edward! i certainly hope tom savini was at least supplied with a delicious lunch for appearing in this trash.