PodBill Just what I expected

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Lars Bear Some reviewers have complained that the plot of this movie bears little resemblance to Lovecraft's original story, and perhaps they're right. In a sense, the film-makers might have done better to call it something different -- then maybe the same folks would be congratulating themselves on spotting all the Lovecraft references, rather than moaning that there weren't enough of them. In terms of plot, it merely hints at Lovecraft; it isn't -- and I venture to suggest -- isn't intended to be an adaptation.In terms of atmosphere, however, it's spot-on. The characters are weird, conflicted, and highly-strung, just as Lovecraft's typically are. There's not a lot of comic relief, and you can tell from the start things are going to end strangely, and unhappily. The film's presentation of a decayed, decadent sea-port is a good match for Lovecraft's, despite being set in a different era.Making the main character gay was an inspired idea. The only human intimacy in the whole movie is between men, and that's still sufficiently unusual in mainstream cinema to be slightly shocking -- as, I imagine, Lovecraft's thinly-veiled references to sexuality would have been shocking to his own readers.I would have rated this film more highly if it had been technically more competent. I appreciate that it's a low-budget offering, but in some places the dialogue cannot be heard over the background music, and some scenes are so badly-lit that it was hard to figure out what was happening.If you expect Cthulhu to be a faithful adaptation of Lovecraft, you'll be disappointed. Viewing it as a weird, intense, story of unhappy people in a run-down town, loosely inspired by Lovecraft's prose and characters, is a whole lot more rewarding.

paulus07 Everything down to the end credits just was one great journey into a twisted artistic vision right at the mouth of madness... I enjoyed every minute! The atmosphere is very dark and broken and while the main character has to deal with past and present conflicts, the audience is drawn deeper and deeper into this twisted nether land, that is slowly unfolded. I rarely find a gem like this, that manages to give me exactly what I am looking for in a horror movie... this one is slow and gentle and leaves you with a pleasantly disturbing feeling in the end.And I think H.P. Lovecraft would have approved of this adaptation. The horror is what happens behind the lines... the unspoken... the images in your head.

john-mcdowall This is really one of the most poorly made and written movies I have seen. The characterisations are weak and uninteresting, exposition is ham-fistedly thrown at you, conclusions bluntly presented and inconsistencies rife. The director failed to make even the simple decision in how to pronounce 'Cthulhu' which has the effect of making the uninitiated think a new character is introduced. The acting is weak, with the lead character switching between camp rage and comical bewilderment every other minute. The 'horrors of a gay man in small town' allegory is completely misfired - unless gay men are often asked to seek out missing children and be raped by randy housewives. HP Lovecraft seems to suffer from the eternal legacy of amateur fools attempting to make his works as Z-movies, of which 'Cthulhu' definitely falls into, and that is a shame as the original source material is so strong. In summary, this is a terrible movie that has nothing in common with the original source material except for the lifting of certain names and places.

Hick_N_Hixville For anyone who isn't a "fan," this movie is an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's campy, but classic 1931 novella, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a master of what is called the "weird tale." I cannot think of anything weirder, and ironically perhaps more appropriate, than making a homosexual version of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. After all, most of Lovecraft's stories, written in prissy overblown prose, were full of sexual repression, and dominated by the lurid tension of forbidden and unspeakable couplings. That is why they are so "weird," and for their time (and even our own) so uniquely interesting.The Shadow Over Innsmouth is just such a story, and the chief weakness of this movie is the filming locations aren't consistently decadent enough to capture the mood of its inspiration. The house where the modern Marsh prophet of the "Old Ones" resides is weird enough, and the wharf-side warehouse is acceptable, but the other scenes of night time ramblings through what looks like suburban tract housing blows the mood badly. Capturing Lovecraft well is about capturing his non linear backdrops more than anything else, and the scenes used aren't sufficiently irregular.Other than this problem, the appropriate sexual tension is there and the rest of the film is creepy enough to almost pull it off. The drugging and "rape" of the gay heir to an unspeakable genealogical legacy by rapacious Tori Spelling in full bimbo mode, assisted by her redneck husband, and done so he can be compelled to fulfill his destiny and spawn subhuman "inbred" descendants for the cause of world domination is a particularly campy and interesting homage to Lovecraftian sexual themes.Also compelling is a scene later near the end of the movie where the nerdish (and presumably fully) human brother-in-law of the gay man (the actor playing the in-law bears a passing physical resemblance to Lovecraft himself) is shown crucified to a tree in front of the family home. This occurs on the day when the earlier generations of mutant townsfolk slither in from the ocean for an "Old Home Day" reunion, and sacrifice ceremony to their "Old One" gods in preparation to take over the world. Most Lovecraft purists who don't like this movie will say this is a sly way the filmmakers tell the audience they are "crucifying" Lovecraft's work, but I think they just wanted to show he was killed presumably because he was not man enough to spawn inhuman scion with his buxom inbred wife. In the end, it took a "queer" to make "queer" babies for this "weird" tale.Lovecraft's writings have acquired a cult following among their own version of the "trekkie" sci fi con type, but the man himself was not interested in inventing a "mythos" for role playing gamers. His stories were extended metaphors for his racist views about the ethnic "degeneration" of Yankee New England because of pre-quota era immigration, and the Shadow Over Innsmouth is directly related to what he would have regarded as the undesirable infiltration, and ultimate demographic domination, of traditional Anglo Protestant fishing villages, such as Gloucester, Marblehead, etc., by Portuguese, Italian, and other Southern Europeans, and their "foreign superstitions" (Roman Catholicism).Lovecraft softened his parochial racist views late in life, and some of his better works, such as "The Colour Out of Space" represent the emergence of the modern science fiction story, and transcend this sort of thing. He was regarded as a hack writer during his lifetime by the literary establishment, but like many complicated and visionary types, his works have been reappraised by academia to the point he is now regarded as a sort of twentieth century Poe.