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.

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.

If this is what the makers of this film take from Lovecraft, I pity them. Lovecraft gives you the skeleton of something horrible and lets your imagination flesh in the rest. That's what makes him so fun to read. You come away from the story IMAGINING other worlds and endless possibilities. This movie leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. In fact it takes particular delight in showing you every gory detail. This should have "Fangoria" on the top of the box not "H.P. Lovecraft's". If you are a fan of Lovecraft and want to see a good tale about Elder gods, don't rent this one. I know it's hard not to grab anything with "Lovecraft" at the top but don't fall for it. The makers of this film stuck his name on their product to get more viewers. You will waste your time and fall for their ploy if you rent this because you like Lovecraft. Don't say I didn't warn you.

My friends and I rented this movie thinking it would be a creepy adaptation of a good Lovecraft story, since a couple of us are Lovecraft fans. However, what we got was something very different than what we bargained for. In short, to us this was not a straight horror movie; it's a dramatic, sardonic comedy that just happens to have a horror-based plot. To me, its overall execution seemed more like a film noir parody than anything. One look/listen at the cheap visuals, low-quality audio, melodramatic acting, horrible scripting, and downright hilarious one-liners makes it fairly obvious that this is not a movie to be taken seriously. At least, we hope not. For what it is (or at least what we hope it is), it was very well-done in that it was pure entertainment, nothing more. If you want some gore, insanity, and slight creepiness to accompany your laughter, then this is the film for you.

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.