Dreams in the Witch House

A young guy is there when his twin sister dies. Her spirit is dragged off into a copse. He loves her so much that he spends the rest of his days trying to see her and get her back. He becomes part of a ridiculous agency that should be helping him. This place is a sham and he is the only one really trying to do something they are setting out to do. He ends up in a house, drinking a kind of elixir that brings him close to his sister, but she can't leave. Meanwhile, a witch shows up and gets in the way. This seemed endless and his quest really unclear to the viewer. It just didn't work for me. It's sad because the Lovecraft stories hold up well on their own.

Had been looking forward to this episode as this is one of my favourite of Lovecraft's short stories. Typically though I was left disappointed. Instead of the nightmarish, hallucinatory tale of other dimensions, child sacrifice and unknowable Alien gods, here we have a rather run of the mill ghost story that only borrows a title, a setting and some characters from the source material, while pretty much ignoring all the interesting details of the source. Given the author's utter disdain for what he saw as the childish notion of 'souls', the afterlife and any form of spirtual redemption this is a very frustrating watch.

Anyway...Rupert Grint ( in very good form) plays a spiritualist desperate to bring back his dead sister and in the house of the title he seems to have found a way to the 'other side' but must now fight off a long dead, vengeful witch and her horrific familiar. As a stand alone horror for those with no knowledge of Lovecraft's wider Mythos this is decent enough, If derivative, slice of scares. If, like me, you were hoping for something a bit more grown up from a series helmed by avid Lovecraft disciple Guillermo Del Toro you will be disappointed and a tiny bit annoyed.

Years after seeing his twin sister die, and her ghost transported to a dark forest, Walter Gilman vows to get her back.

I was so excited to see this story adapted, and was even more excited when I saw Rupert Grint's name appear, I figured for him to feature that it was going to be something special.

Sadly this came as something of a disappointment, I was expecting something bleak and macabre, but was instead faced with something a little more Alice in Wonderland.

Some things worked, the visuals, the acting, Grint in particular was great, and there was some atmosphere.

Sadly there were more detractors, the story itself just didn't work on any horror level, it lacked tension, it lacked excitement, it needed to be more bleak. Pacing was poor, it was just too pedestrian, the script was distinctly average, at times if felt a little amateur.

The biggest disappointment so far this series, this was the one I had high hopes for, 5/10.

The original short story by Lovecraft is an absolutely terrifying nightmare, and might be one of the better works of the master of cosmic horror.

This adaptation however is completely neutered and Disneyfied, like many things are these days... For examples of this, look no further than Rupert Grint's cartoony hair-do and the fact that the villain of the piece has an actual Disney-style sidekick in the form of a broad-accented, human-faced rat. A truly embarassing hour of television. The Harry Potter generation might get a slight kick out of this, who knows, but this should be avoided at all costs by lovers of the writings of HP Lovecraft.

When I read the complete stories of HP Lovecraft, there was only one that was able to give me nightmares, and it was precisely this one: The Dreams in the Witch's House. Being this , an absolutely terrifying story, I expected an adaptation that would do it justice, and even more so considering that Del Toro has openly declared himself to be a fan of Lovecraft on more than one occasion. However, the story was painfully adapted, nothing faithful to the original story, and although the special effects are quite good, the development of the characters and the story in general is lousy and poorly achieved. A real pity, a missed opportunity, if we take into account, apart from everything I've already said, the fact that the first 4 episodes were wonderfully made.