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Maybe one benefit of watching films like ‘In Search of Lovecraft‘ is that people understand how the quality of the cast and not the budget makes or breaks a movie.
This one happens to be a Halloween-style TV feature about HP Lovecraft and mockumentary in style. The narrative makes its way toward the climax as these fools start realizing that there is some reality to those stories
Now, cosmic horror is about the apparently mundane things being peeled away in a gradual fashion so that it can be revealed that things are way more terrifying than one may think. Hence, this movie being hampered by a low budget can still make itself work if it can build tension and atmosphere as things change at a very slow, gradual pace to reveal madness.
I’m sorry to say that the actress portraying the reporter Ruth Marsh seems to only have one and a half expressions across her face. For the most part, she holds this stare that can only be described as, Well, well, well, look what we have here a deer caught in headlights. This is deeply unnerving because it has me wondering, why does she look the way she does? Did some unfortunate event lead to her being miscast? Or was someone bungled in the catering department so she had to make faces so as not to vomit? Oh and having said that, sometimes she does look mildly irritated and traces over that annoying look.
What worsens is when this character is written in a manner that makes her utterly detestable. While interviewing the woo-woo expert, she dismisses the woo-woo stuff totally. It is utterly ridiculous how she is able to speak about people behind their backs seamlessly. Even when someone is praying for her life, clearly traumatized, she has the audacity to interrupt such a poor woman and inquire, “Have you heard of Lovecraft?” Her complaints about not receiving real assignments are sometimes annoying, but one can easily understand why.
The rest of the cast leaves much to be desired, but I suppose that is to be expected, given the standard set by many franchises. The other two are Mike the cameraman and Rebecca’s assistant Amber, and they are both boring guys and bimbo stereotypes.
It is true that things can still be engrossing, even in a film where the major characters engage in incessant dialogue, but this movie is so hurt by inept actors and a screenplay that seems to relish detailing the characters’ stupidity and unpleasantness. Since nothing interesting occurs, for the most part, the movie required a cast with greater-than-life appeal and personas to pull it off.
And that is, in a nutshell, the issue with In Search of Lovecraft. Which characters? What charm? If anything, the choreographed nonsense is beneficial conceptually because ways to mask the astonishing analysis need to be found and clown costumes are a great way to make mannequins interesting and the cloned main cast is pure mannequin to me.
Never judge by what is on the movie’s poster I do not know the origin of that naked sexy female ghoul, but she is not in this movie. For the most part, one gets an old lady with rotten makeup pretending to rock a chair for a couple of minutes as if she desperately wants to be something in the realm of The Conjuring but is only able to afford five dollars for the costume.
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