The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

Best movie of this year hands down!

One of my all time favorites.

Fresh and Exciting

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

With having seen the film mentioned on IMDbs Horror board a number of time,I decided the it was time that I finally took a look at the movie. Disappointingly finding the DVD of the title to be deleted,I was happy to discover that the flick had recently been put online,which led to me preparing to at last hear the sound of Cthulhu.The plot:Gathering up his late uncles belongings as he takes care of his estate,a man finds a large box locked shut.Breaking the box open,the nephew finds disturbing newspaper clippings that his uncle has left behind.Decades earlier:Uncovering details of an occult praying for a strange creature called the Cthulhu to rise from the dead,the man/uncle starts searching round for clues about where the ritual is taking place.Gathering a crew to take him to a remote island,the man soon begins to regret ever having heard the name "Cthulhu."View on the film:Filmed over 2 years with a $50,000 budget from The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society,director Andrew Leman makes sure that every penny can be seen on the screen.Filmed in crisp black and white,Leman and cinematographer/editor David Robertson make the title look like a long lost German Expressionism artifact,thanks to a rich depth of field placing the unfolding newspaper story with a razor sharp edge.Harking back to the earliest days of cinema,Leman brings Cthulhu to life with excellent stop-motion animation,as the jerky animation movements give Cthulhu a stop/start spider-like creepiness.Bringing Lovecraft's tale to life,the screenplay Sean Branney perfectly uses a minimum of dialogue to build a striking sense of the fear that Cthulhu is held in.Building an investigating path with the dual nephew/uncle investigations,Branney peels away any hope that the characters have of finding an answer in "reality",as the deep-fried memories of victims cast a chilling shadow across the screen,as Cthulhu rises from the abyss.

It was quite the surprise to find out about this movie. As a HP Lovecraft fan, it was a great pleasure to see his masterwork done so faithfully. The entire movie is done in the way of the old silent movies (ie.: as if during the time Lovecraft wrote the story). It is very difficult to adapt his works: Lovecraft put more attention on the feeling of dread and confusion, hammering the point that 'we are nothing in comparison to what is happening, and can't even begin to understand it', than on the narrative. Still, 'The Call of Cthulhu' is possibly the more straight-forward of his stories, and they did a great job; the movie not only follows the narrative closely (with a few minor changes, like the fight aboard the Emma/Alert), but also manages to create an atmosphere which, while not on par with what Lovecraft intended, still creates suspense enough to work.The acting is amateurish/over the top, but done in a way that would feel normal in the old silent films. The effects are very low-budget too, but that also falls in place with the whole 'silent era' theme of the movie (smart move, by the way). Cthulhu's appearance looks dated, but on par with those old special-effects monsters (on par with the old 'King Kong', or even better to me).Overall, a very worthy try at and a must-see for any HP Lovecraft fan. People who don't know him, or have only seen Stuart Gordon's crappy adaptations, might probably not like it though.

We watched 'The Call of Cthulhu' late last night. It's a 2005 film made to look like a 1920s b/w silent movie. There is no sound just the dialog screens like in old movies. I do think it would have benefited from an organ accompaniment as was often used in that day. Instead it was totally silent. The actors and scenes were also done to look like a film from that era. This story is from one of HP Lovecraft's most famous. I was never a fan of his and I'm still not. All his stories I've seen made into films are basically the same, creatures from another dimension or time, whatever, are trying to enter our world and take over. Often some nuts are trying to help them. This one was different because the film was made to look like it's from 1928 the same time Lovecraft wrote the story. It only lasted 47 minutes and that was wise. The novelty of watching a 2005 film made to look like a 1920 silent was wearing off by the time it ended. For me it was worth seeing since I love old films even if I'm not a Lovecraft fan. The makers should be respected for what they tried to do here. It often really did look like an old silent film. The monster effects near the end seem right on the money for the time. Sometimes the set designs looked like something right out of 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'. See this if you appreciate silent films.

I've never read The Call of Cthulhu or any of Lovecraft's work, so I went into this movie not really sure what to expect. It came up in the Netflix Instant Watch Horror section, and it caught my eye because the of the old-timey cover, but the modern date. I looked it up and was more intrigued to see that it was a black and white silent film, made only 6 years ago.I'm interested in movies that use the medium of film to do something more than simply capture moving images - films that have a unique take or message through how they're being filmed just as much as what is being filmed. "The Call of Cthulhu" indeed has an interesting message - to take you back to the time in which the story is set, you are watching it in the medium of the time. It is not a simple "period piece" where all the actors are wearing old fashioned clothing but being filmed with state of the art equipment... This is a true period piece, and feels as if it could've been made in the 20s. And I think this is the sort of medium, atmosphere and period that this story was made for... The time of the Creature Feature, but also a time where exploration and globalization were really just taking off.In any case, it gave me a lot to think about as to how we view what we are viewing in a movie, and I highly recommend it. It really says a lot about how you can create a good story with bad (or at least outdated) special effects. At the end, well, I won't give anything away, but it really did frighten me. It's only 45 minutes and definitely worth your time.