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Master of Horror John Carpenter directs this Lovecraftian horror thriller about an insurance investigator (Sam Neill) who teams up with a publishing company rep (Julie Carmen) to find a missing horror novelist named Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). Their search for Cane takes them to the town of Hobb’s End, a fictional place where Cane sets all his novels. After a series of unexplainable events, the publisher tries to convince Neill’s character that they are literally inside one of Cane’s stories. When Neill tries to escape Hobb’s End, he’s unable to do so without coming face to face with Sutter Cane and fulfilling the author’s wishes — to deliver his final book to the publishing company.
While I appreciate the execution of In the Mouth of Madness, the core concept is one that rarely appeals to me: a blending of reality and fantasy that may or may not be entirely in the protagonist’s head. All throughout the movie, Sutter Cane’s readers are losing their grips on reality and committing murder or suicide. It later becomes clear that this is all part of Cane’s plan — that he’s transforming minds in preparation for a coming apocalypse, one in which many Lovecraftian monsters will be unleashed upon the world. My investment in a story wanes when it’s implied that the story might be all a dream or in someone’s imagination. These kinds of stories operate without any verisimilitude, which neuters dramatic stakes and deflates tension. When you break the rules of storytelling to this degree, you can do any fanciful, nonsensical thing you want, and thus nothing really means anything.
To be fair, In the Mouth of Madness does reveal the truth in the end — a very strong ending, actually — and this helped me enjoy the movie more than I would have otherwise. But I found act two to be a tedious slog compared to the first and final acts. It doesn’t help that the middle act depends considerably on Julie Carmen’s character, and she is simply not an engaging actor.
Despite my personal taste about the core concept, the film has a lot going for it. There’s no better director than Carpenter to helm a horror movie, and no better actor than Sam Neill to star in one. Both men are staples in the genre. The film also features more special effects makeup than any Carpenter film since The Thing, courtesy of the KNB Effects Group. Prochnow makes for a pleasantly mysterious villain, and it’s fun to see film legend Charlton Heston as the head of Cane’s publishing company. Wonderful character actors Frances Bay (Happy Gilmore), David Warner (Time After Time) and John Glover (Gremlins 2) also make appearances. Look for a very young Hayden Christensen (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith) as a boy on a bicycle.