Skip to main content

"have you read sutter cane?" or "do you know tyler durden?"

1995 was a pretty good year for horror thanks primarily to In The Mouth of MadnessLord of Illusions, and one of my all time favorites, Demon Knight.

For some reason, in my head I always confuse In The Mouth of Madness & Lord of Illusions. Don't ask me why but when thinking about them I'm always like, "which one is which?" So every once in  a while I need to watch them both to remind myself which is which.

Quick recap of each before we dig in
In The Mouth of Madness: Directed by John Carpenter (win.) and starring Sam Neill (double win.)
$.25 version of the story - Writer creates books that make people go crazy.

Lord of Illusions: Directed by Clive Barker (mega win!) and staring Scott Bakula (okay, small win.)
$.25 version of the story - Magicians do creepy things.

Honestly, you'd think I'd be able to keep those two things clear in my head! Ugh.

So, In The Mouth of Madness. While there's plenty of great elements to look at, if you keep up with my blog this won't surprise you, the thing I love most is Sam Neill. Proving for the billionth time that he's got an uncanny knack for being a creepy bastard, Sam Neill plays both a delusional psychotic and a calm, cool, collected average guy. His character is so savvy about people that he's prone to paranoia, betraying his potential to freak out at any second. Considering how his character struggles with defining and living within "reality", (not an easy task), what's most impressive about the performance is Neill's ability to slide convincingly through the scale of completely sane to completely deranged in no time flat.

But stopping here would be selling the movie short; there's so much more to it.

It's full of great social commentary on consumerism, obsession, hype, and that increasingly blurry line between fact and fiction. Throughout the movie Carpenter keeps asking us, "what's real and what makes those things real?" Is it simply a matter of believing in something? And how many people must believe in something before it's true? And if everyone believes in something except for one person, is that person insane?

There actually seems to be a bit of contradiction in the answer to these questions: Sam Neill's character seems to be the only person that believes that Sutter Cane's (Jurgen Prochnow) novels are crap despite the huge amount of hype and popularity surrounding them (read here commentary on how movies that do well at the box office aren't necessarily "good.") This tells us that one person believing something is not enough to make it true. On the other hand, Sutter Cane claims he created an entire reality simply by thinking it up and writing it down. One man believes it's true and it appears to be so. (Read here commentary on religion and politics?)

So, does one person's belief constitute reality? Comes down to a question of power. Ah, power. How we love thee. Power to convince people that your opinion is correct. Power to control others. Power to create your own reality. Power to position those who oppose you as insane. And possibly a related  question of where you get that power from.

And while Carpenter has said that the story is referential to Lovecraft (and of course, it is) - it also feels a bit like an homage (or response) to Cronenberg's Videodrome (another movie that I love and if you haven't seen it, I demand that you go watch it on Netflix right now.) Both movies deal heavily in the realm of surreality and hyperreality; conceptually fascinating stuff that I could rant about way longer than any of you care to read.

And as I can hear birds chirping outside my window (at this late/early hour of 5.50am) it's now wrap up time.

The title of this post implied a comparison between In The Mouth of Madness and Fight Club, which I didn't explicitly spell out in my rambling. If you can't connect the dots and see the similarities on your own, quit reading my blog. Retard.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Witch (2015)

You know the drill - there's ALWAYS spoilers. Don't want the movie ruined for you, come back after you've seen it. Also - I'm still without an editor - typos and bad grammar await you! I keep hoping that the cultural obsession with zombies will end; literally every other damn movie that comes 'round seems to feature some sort of shambling, undead being bent on devouring the weak flesh of regular humans. Once upon a time, zombies have have been used as a metaphor for the blind consumerism created by our capitalist society, or the perceived depletion of resources by immigrants, or even the ravages of time and disease on our frail bodies. Now it seems that the deeper social commentary has been lost as audiences mindlessly consume "zombie fiction" in an attempt to keep up with trends. ( How very meta - a film buddy of mine commented on this assessment! ) All of this is just a sideways rant, leading up to my actual point: it seems that zombie may actually...

Mother!

Alright friends and readers–this one is probably doubly filled with typos and grammar errors because I wrote it while angry. Good luck and happy reading. There are unpopular opinions in every realm. As a film student, you can truly strike a nerve when you say things like, "I fucking hate the self-indulgence of independent films and the way people idolize them." Or, you know, "Low lighting and slow pacing does not a good movie make." Or whatever. You can of course, objectively, understand how this happens. When you are creating art–when you are outside the system  so to speak–you are free to explore things (subjects, techniques, etc.) that may need to be addressed and that freedom can become intoxicating and go to one's head. While it may seem only right  or only fair  to respect and accept each creative endeavor that every artist undertakes, it is unreasonable to believe that the world will remain forever patient with the self-obsession artists have. Th...

The Babadook

Spoilers and typos! Enjoy. We often look back nostalgically on childhood, envious of the joy we felt and the boundless imaginations we possessed. How conveniently we forget the other side of that coin: as children, we experience a depth of terror our adult selves continually try to recreate for cathartic entertainment. When we try to bring those childhood fears to life on the screen, we often end up with movies about "things that go bump in the night," which is a somewhat superficial approach. While it does provide an opportunity for a supernatural experience, it ignores the root of our fear: the unknown . As children, we lack life experience. We lack nuance. We lack understanding. Not knowing creates in us fear. Yes, we fear what lurks in the darkness but we also fear the adult world because we do not understand how it works. The Babadook works to exploit both  those fears. The short story: a widowed mother of a young boy experiences a mental breakdown and tries to...