Tag: Lovecraftian

Movie Review: THE ENDLESS – an ambitious story hamstrung by budget and self-indulgence

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews5 Comments

Right off the bat, I’ll start by saying that not only am I a fan of the writing/directing team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, I also predict they’re going to be big in the near future, whether that’s by continuing to make a name for themselves in the world of weird horror, or by succumbing to big money studio deals – and regardless of what I think of their newest movie The Endless.  I urge you to seek out their previous two features, Resolution and Spring, and feel free to check out my spoiler free reviews before or after if you do.  You’ll definitely want to see Resolution before The Endless, however.

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Movie Review: THE VOID – successfully blends its many obvious influences into an entertaining piece of indie horror.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

An old school friend of mine shares much the same interest in indie horror as me, so when he recommended The Void, I didn’t waste any time in requesting a copy.  As soon as I started watching it, I realized that I heard about this way back in the distant past of 2016, when it debuted to a strong critical reception at Fantastic Fest, the Texas film festival co-founded by Ain’t It Cool’s Harry Knowles.  The Canadian movie has already garnered a cult following, and it’s not hard to see why.

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Movie Review: THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT – classic piece of scifi cinema that holds up well thanks to a dark, Lovecraftian tone.

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quatermass

No great secret here: I am a fan of the work of HP Lovecraft.  That’s an easy thing to say these days I guess, if you want to get some kind of credibility in the horror genre, but I find it easy to weed out the real fans.  The Fake Ones are all about tossing the name of Cthulhu around, while qualifying his work with a disclaimer that distances themselves from him.  “I really love his stuff, but he was so racist …”.  It’s the kind of surface-level thinking that shows in “Lovecraftian” fiction peppered throughout the Amazon .99c specials.  Throw in The Elder Gods, some tentacles, Cthulhu, and hey presto, a Lovecraft pastiche.  Very few people actually get the work of Lovecraft, they only get the pop culture tropes, then hit a brick wall.  Fewer still moviemakers get it, but there have been some.  There’s an article in me someday that will list my top 5 Lovecraftian movies, but this is a review of 1955’s The Quatermass Xperiment, renamed The Creeping Unknown for the US market, a much more fitting title, I feel.

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Movie Review: SPRING

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spring

It’s not often that a movie comes along and creates its own genre.  Spring, written by Justin Benson and directed by Benson and Aaron Moorhead (who also created the Bonestorm segment of V/H/S Viral, actually does just that: RomHor!  Does that sound dumb or overhyped?  Probably both, but I feel it’s true.  I’ve seen many a romantic drama, and many a horror movie, and this is absolutely a successful fusion of both in that neither element feels half assed.  The movie poster describes it as Richard Linklater meets HP Lovecraft – not a terrible mashup, but not completely accurate, to me anyway.  This is clearly the movie that Benson and Moorhead set out to make, and I mostly liked it.

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