The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

I see that some people have seen hidden beauty behind this film, but I simply cannot agree. As much as I am a fan of all things HPL, I was extremely disappointed in this film.

First off, you can only call this an animated film in the loosest sense. If your idea of animation is moving a 2-dimensional cutout very poorly, then this fits that qualification. My wife likened this to a long episode of "Reading Rainbow" than an "animated feature length film".

The voice actors for the film sound like gamers who were called in by their friends to read lines. Actual voice acting is almost non-existent in the film.

I could go on and on why this is not a good purchase, but suffice it to say that I would heartily recommend renting or borrowing this film before purchasing. It is not going to be for everyone and if you are one of the select few who enjoys it, congratulations. For the rest of us, we would best be served by watching one of the many excellent live-action adaptations of HPL.

As a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft, and the story upon which this film is based in particular, I sat down to watch this quite skeptical that it would be well done. I've seen a lot of Lovecraft adaptations, and they are usually quite a bit worse than bad.

What I got was a real treat. The creators did an excellent job of not only capturing the story, but changing it from an unfilmable, dialogue-free narrative to something more engaging. It looks like a lot of good effort was put into making it as good as it could be on what appears to be a budget of about a couple of hundred dollars.

About the budget, it is quite evident that the creators had a minuscule one. The film is mostly still pictures, with some very minimal animation, and it is all black and white. My one real gripe with it is the quality of the voice recordings. The character voices are too dynamic - sometimes too loud, sometimes, too soft to hear over the music or other sounds. It gets a bit annoying at times in that regard.

Overall, though, this captures the spirit of the original story better than any Lovecraft adaptation I've seen. It speaks volumes about how a good story told well is preferable to a mundane big budget flick any day.

There is a magical quality to this film that originates not with Lovecraft's source novel, but with the artist and director's love of that material. This film is ambitious to be sure; it may be the lowest budgeted animated feature ever completed. But the edginess that it derives from its humble origins creates a wonderful expectation in the audience. What will happen next? How will the animation evolve? For one of the most interesting aspects of the film's creation is that it was done linearly; so literally the animation becomes more diverse and innovative as the film progresses! I highly recommend this film not only to fans of Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany, but to fans of animation and animated cinema. There is much to be learned from this film's example, and even more to be enjoyed.

THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH is an ambitious movie, striving to adapt one of H.P. Lovecraft's most fantastical fictions and succeeding in nearly every aspect. Using a unique style of animation, director Edward Martin III has created a movie that should be examined by more than the typical "Lovecraft-Crowd" - the movie is that good. The voice actors did an excellent job wrapping their mouths around the more complex "Lovecraft-isms" (Nyarlathotep anyone?) and still conveying the sense of wonder that a story like ...KADATH evokes. The soundtrack was inspired as well.

If you have an opportunity to see this movie, SEE IT.

This is not a perfect adaptation, but it's very close. It is obvious that this film did not have a budget of millions of dollars. However, that is not the main point. Like the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's black and white silent version of "The Call of Cthulhu", it is obvious that this film is also a labor of love. Both films follow the original story and do it well. If you are a true child of technology, you will probably not like this film. If you are more concerned with story, though, then you will love this. This film has more heart than any 50 multimillion dollar productions from Hollywood. A few things that make it less that 10/10 are the fact that the music occasionally is so loud that you can't hear the dialog, the animation is occasionally so poor that it pulls you out of the story, and a couple of the actors read their lines so woodenly that it pulls you out. For what this is, though, these are minor hassles. The music, even when it's too loud, is really quite good, too.