Beyond the Wall of Sleep

Even though the H.P. Lovecraft is a great author, the person who directed makes bad films and makes a mockery of his books. This movie has the worst acting i have ever seen. Though, i will give it credit for its comic relief, but i can't not say it was the worst movie i've ever bought and regret it. So my words of wisdom are "don't buy this movie", you can rent it but don't buy it, it doesn't deserve to be next to Fight Club or even Josie and the Pussycats. The ending however came to a bit surprise, it was the only good part of the movie. I not going to tell you what happens, but if you want to follow along with the story a little better i recommend reading the book because its hard to follow. My overall rating: 3.

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.

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.

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!