In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

This is Lovecraftian horror done right! It has the budget, it has the talent and it definitely has the style. Atmosphere is the key for any movie inspired by the works of the great Howard Phillips, and this one gets it! The horror is not in your face, it is eerie, subtle and ever present. It might not be always visible, but in the back of your mind you know it's there if you close your eyes.. This movie is a must watch for all horror fans, but for anyone who has tasted the insanity of Lovecraft's works and has not looked away, it is a tasty mouthful indeed!

Sam Neill plays John Trent, an insurance investigator slash private eye, in this John Carpenter horror movie that sets out to expand your horizon and blur the lines between fiction and reality. Trent starts the movie as a patient in a mental institution where a doctor arrives to hear his tale. And what a tale it turns out to be. Trent was hired to investigate the disappearance of a horror author Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), a known eccentric and mad savant.Accompanied by Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), Cane's editor, Trent travels to Hobb's End, a New Hampshire town none of them have ever heard of, except in Cane's novels. After a night of driving, they find their destination, but almost immediately dark tidings start to unravel and Trent finds himself pulled deeper and deeper into the unknown, into the realm of unnatural, of fiction and horror.In the Mouth of Madness feels very much like a Stephen King novel. The small town setting, an author and a book as plot points, the idea that the horror is an extra-dimensional threat trying to break into our reality, the somewhat meta approach the story takes. And I don't mean this in a bad way. Yet it's so weird to see Carpenter emulating King so faithfully. Their particular styles of horror have had similarities before and clearly they've both influenced one another, but this is Carpenter very much trying to tell a Stephen King style horror story. And he succeeds.More cannot really be said without spoilers. It's an enjoyable horror film with good actors, a twisty plot and a great style courtesy of one of the greatest horror director's to ever pick up a camera.

"In the Mouth of Madness" has surreal and gruesome horror, as per usual for a John Carpenter film, but what's scariest about it are the ideas it presents.The film is mostly grounded in the idea that reality is an illusion, and, despite humans grasping for order in the universe, just beneath the surface lies only inexplicable chaos, and this is uncovered through the release of a universal book. Once a skeptic, John Trent (a convincingly insane Sam Neill) slowly begins to descend into chaos and madness through a series of strange and scattered events. A group of children are used as vessels for chaos, time doesn't seem to comply, unexplained monsters appear, and Carpenter's blocking frequently suggests an isolation and alienation for Trent, looking small in the frame and sometimes completely surrounded by darkness and the unknown, which is the driving factor for fear in this film. As the film continues, it's hard to tell what is reality and what isn't, and that's kind of the point. Even when it seems Trent has snapped back into reality, it is revealed that there are only more layers of confusion, and the end of the film is brilliant in it's ultimate, meta- realization that reaches out to the viewer and leaves us feeling insecure about our own reality, and sanity, even if just for a second (although I think it would have been more effective without the music).

There's references to both Stephen King and Lovecraft, but the movie itself is more a celebration of this kind of horror in general. The whole movie is about questioning one's own sanity, as the horror evoked by not knowing what is real, has been an effective trope in horror fiction for a long time. There's some slight attempts at connecting it to a philosophical level concerning subjective reality, but it never really gets all that interesting. I don't think the plot was meant to explore the limits of horror, fictional reality or anything like it, but rather to serve as a vehicle to unsettling scenes. And for that, it works alright.Sam Neil's performance is good, but Julie Carmen was not always that convincing, though it might have been on purpose. The best part of the movie is not the plot nor the actors, though, but the utter charm that Carpenter brings to most of his movies. The special effects and just the general looks of them evokes something special, though sadly it's not fear.