In Search of Lovecraft

A reporter, Rebecca Marsh (Renee Sweet), while investigating H. P. Lovecraft gets more than she bargained for.

This presentation was probably meant to be a Halloween quickie of the "Blair Witch" type. Unfortunately, it falls cinematically short of just about anything that you might have seen; it has bad camera work, bad actors, bad acting, bad dialogue, how many bads can something have.

It is even a pity that Lovecraft Followers could not even appreciate this movie. If this is your first Lovecraft movie do not let it hinder you from watching others.

We named our cat Cat-thulhu as the little monster calls you into the next room and then attacks.

In the opening titles they give special credit to the special/makeup effects guy. WHY? The small amount of effects called for in this movie are all done pathetically bad. The acting is really atrocious, believe me it goes from bad to laughingly worse. The tedium in this script is unbearable,. It takes 50 minutes of running time to get to any action. When I say "action" I am not talking "Poltergeist" level action. Action is 5 minutes of the white witch mumbling nonsense syllables and Runic names while an empty rocking chair moves slowly back and forth. This movie is too tedious to recommend as a so-bad-it's-good movie. Avoid it. Really. Avoid it.

I have read everything ever written by Lovecraft including fragments and collaborations with other authors. It is sad that given the state of the art effects available today that no major studio can make a quality adaptation of any of Lovecraft's major works. Those that have been made thus far are either pure camp or pure crap. This film falls into the latter category. The acting is elementary school level because I have seen far better acting at high school productions. The plot borrows loosely from Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark" by mentioning the tetrahedron stone and the Starry Wisdom Sect. Lovecraft's most important works always were set in New England with a few notable exceptions such as "The Horror At Red Hook". To film this story in San Francisco is to rob it of any chance of atmosphere. If you want to see a scary and suspenseful Lovecraft adaptation watch "The Dreams in The Witch House" which was an episode of "The Masters of Horror" television series. I believe it is available on Netflix for streaming. By the way, I gave this 2 stars instead of none because the Halloween interviews conducted by the reporter in the beginning of the film were somewhat amusing

Having friend in the movie business, I understand student films, and I've seen quite a few. Most of them make an honest effort to be good. They try hard, and sometimes they fail, sometimes they succeed. This fails. Miserably. I'm sick of low-budget filmmakers who think that not using a tripod makes their film "verite'." It doesn't. It makes it nauseating to watch. Add to that all the little details that make it irritatingly bad, such as: TV reporters wear makeup. Lots of it. Ms. Marsh appears to be wearing none. Editors have the messiest offices in the known universe. They don't look like a vacant office with a stack of newspapers on the desk. And who uses white out? (It was on the desk) If someone is so insane as to need a straight jacket, she is NOT going to be in a regular hospital bed. Why not just put her in a chair staring out the window? TV cameramen use tripods for on-the-street interviews. Always. And wireless mics, too.

All this is just from the first 25 minutes. I couldn't stand to watch any more. The writing was abysmal (it would have been better to let the actors improvise), the camera work looked like a 5-year-old who stole daddy's camcorder, and the acting was... well, it was lousy too. A lot of bad actors, if they're well-directed (like Heather Graham), can still manage to not ruin a production, but the directing is so vacant that the acting really drags it down. Not that it had far to go.

Don't waste your time on this. To see how to do a low-budget horror flick right, see the first Evil Dead.

Well, I will say that writer and director David J. Hohl was definitely on the right track here, because the 2008 movie "In Search of Lovecraft" had potential. Just a shame that the budget didn't allow the film maker to achieve more with his vision.

That being said, then I must also say that this movie is low budget and the low budget feel just permeates the entire movie, for better or worse. And this is a make or break thing, I believe, for most viewers. I managed to endure and sit through the entire ordeal, given my love and interest in all things Lovecraftian. But mark my words, this is not an overly great movie.

Sure, there were aspects to the movie that were interesting enough, but they just weren't properly utilized or brought to fruition, and the movie just never made it out of that low budget, homemade feel that it had to it. And that served as a hindrance to the movie as a whole.

The acting in the movie wasn't really the best. Sure, the actors and actresses were doing good enough jobs, I suppose. But if you are sitting down for some spectacular and believable acting performances, then "In Search of Lovecraft" is not the right movie to watch.

Visually, then "In Search of Lovecraft" was suffering terribly from a lack of proper funding for proper effects. The effects in the movie were dubious, at best. And the CGI in the movie, forget about it. The CGI was like something straight out of an early 1990s computer game. Yeah, it was that bad.

The movie is listed as a horror movie, well I suppose as it deals with the topic of Lovecraft and the established mythos of the Old Ones, then there was a sense of cosmic dread to it. But horror? Nah, this was not a scary feature in any way.

"In Search of Lovecraft" is not among the top contender of movies that are based on the Lovecraft mythos. If you wish to watch something like that, you would be better off with something else, say perhaps some older Yuzna movies.

As for the storyline, well it was a watchable movie, sure. But the script, plot and storyline just felt a bit rushed and not really full circle. It was like there was lacking a red thread throughout the course of the movie, to fully tie the individual events of the movie together for a greater picture.

I sat through the entire ordeal, but I wouldn't exactly say that I was entertained, or particularly enjoying the movie. But loyalty to Lovecraft and an unhealthy interest in the mythos made me endure the entire ordeal.

My rating of "In Search of Lovecraft" lands on a three out of ten stars, based mostly on the effort and the spirit put into this project. This is hardly a movie that I would recommend my fellow Lovecraft enthusiasts to rush out and grab a copy of; it is just not all that interesting.