#3 In The Mouth of Madness Review: Top 5 Horror Films For Halloween
In The Mouth of Madness: New Line Cinema
Runtime: 105 mins Release Date: February 3, 1995
Director: John Carpenter
Starring: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow, David Warner
Screenplay: Michael De Luca Score: John Carpenter
Distributor: New Line Cinema
John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness is a masterclass in making a Lovecraftian story for the big screen. It follows Trent (Sam Neil) a freelance insurance fraud investigator (who is established as one of the best available early in the film) while he investigates a claim made by a publisher surrounding their missing star author, Sutter Cane. Sutter Cane is played up as a sort of Stephen King on an almost supernatural level of popularity. It is noted that more people read his works globally than read the bible and that his work tends to cause some strange…effects, to those who read them.
They even outright mention that King wishes he was on the same level as Cane demonstrating a keen awareness to the distinctions people may draw between authors in the real world and Cane. Cane’s book covers even look like Stephen King covers that were around at the time of the release in 1995. Over the course of the film Trent goes through a nightmarish journey to find the missing author that leads him beyond the horrors of our reality and into one of indescribable terror.
This film is definitely one where the horror is more thought provoking. On the surface, things often don’t seem that scary, but when you interpret events through Trents eyes and how he is experiencing them you can understand and maybe even get chills like I did from the existential dread that drips from this film.
In its essence this film is a love letter to H.P. Lovecraft, many events and themes are taken straight from Lovecraft's work. It asks viewers to consider the question: what if H.P. Lovecraft was more popular than Stephen King and what if the horrors he wrote about actually existed?
Like Suspiria, this film will appeal to those not well-versed in gory films as there is minimal blood throughout. The film is much more of a cosmic horror vehicle that makes you question the nature of reality. H.P. Lovecraft himself wrote about god-like creatures that came from his dreams, so, to some degree, he believed they truly existed and this film explores that idea: what if he was right and what if all that held them back was an author's typewriter.
