In the Mouth of Madness (1994) – Once Again, Ending the World in Paperback

Greetings and a Happy Halloween to you all!

Once again, it's time to close up shop on another horror franchise of October. And in this case, we're not so much closing the shop as we're burning the whole thing to the ground.

By 1994, John Carpenter had been to the Apocalypse Trilogy twice. The Thing left the fate of the world ambiguously saved – the creature may be frozen, it may not. Prince of Darkness edged closer to the brink, offering a tease of an averted crisis before suggesting that the end was merely altered rather than prevented. Proving third time pays for all, Carpenter finally sealed humanity's doom with the Lovecraftian In the Mouth of Madness.

Like I said last time, this is a movie that has a pretty good standing among horror fans now. At the risk of making this a bit personal, I'm actually really happy for that. When I was first introduced to this movie by a friend, it was barely a blip on a lot of the horror community radars. Its most prominent placing was in lists of H.P. Lovecraft/Lovecraft inspired movies, and even then, it was often filling in the rest of the list behind heavies like Re-Animator and From Beyond.

I'm still not even sure exactly when or how its image rehabilitation began, but somewhere over the past ten years, the horror community has begun to take more of a shine to this dark piece of meta-horror, and, like the condemnation and later redemption of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, I'm pleased to see how the court of public opinion has reversed its ruling.

Okay, personal thoughts about this movie's comeback story aside, let's get into what it's bringing to the table.

...somehow, trying to find a single amusing caption for this
almost feels like dressing it up more than the image needs.

This is the first time in a while I've watched this movie as a part of the larger thematic cycle it takes part in instead of just on its own merits. I bring this up in part because, after discussing the tight, tense structure of The Thing and the looser, conceptually headier feel of Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness feels like it lands in something of a sweet spot between the two. The movie's ideas about belief and the fluid nature of reality are definitely from the side of Carpenter that gave us good and evil as quantum energy in PoD, but it also weds it to the tighter, more structured narrative of his early work with The Thing. While it never quite surpasses either of its predecessors in those particular fields, its ability to meld the two sensibilities serves it well in its own regard.

Those themes in particular are the part of the movie that sticks with me more over the years. When I first saw this in what was either the late 90s or early aughts, the movie's somewhat outlandish view of reality – the idea that of it as a sort of tenuous force held together by belief, that could be effectively shattered by the right sort of mass delusion was something I had never expected to see in a horror film. It was a big part of why it made such an impression on me, even before getting to the movie's bleak finale that takes the movie...well, it says right on the box. Looking at it now in the cold light of the past few years, there's something that feels especially chilling about the idea the movie is proposing – that enough people choosing to believe in ostensible fictions could potentially upend every notion of a sane, reasonable world as people know it.

I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole too far now, but I will say up front, I have toyed off and on with going into a full write-up of how sadly prescient this movie would prove to be the altogether toxic relationship with conspiracy culture that has become a prominent force over the past few years. I told myself up front I wasn't going to make that the central thrust of this piece, but I still had to give it a nod. As a full deep dive, I'm not taking this one off the table, either.

Anyway, back to the movie.

Fun fact for those watching at home - on the right is Carpenter 

regular Peter Jason, AKA Dr. Leahy from previously
covered Prince of Darkness. This would make him one of the only 

cast members to be in more than one  part of the Trilogy.

Looked at on paper, the ideas Carpenter is playing with here are a daunting list. Besides the idea of malleable reality, he also ties in elements of meta-fiction, wedding that with Lovecraft's ideas as a way to explore the idea of being utterly powerless and at the mercy of ancient, malevolent forces beyond human reckoning. As the ideas of Lovecraft go, it's one of the trickier to properly pull off in a a live action film– which makes it interesting that of the aspects he plays with from the mythos, this is the one Carpenter manages to nail the most effectively.

As far as the execution of the rest of the movie goes, it has held up well for itself.

As part of his 90s return to the horror genre, Sam Neill (welcome back for another October) is well suited to playing the movie's lead, a cynic cursed with a front row seat to watching the rest of the world go mad, casually flip about the worst in people, but ultimately unprepared to actually face the true worst when it is unleashed. As his counterpoint, the enigmatic author Sutter Cane, veteran character actor Jurgen Prochnow is unsettling in how calm he is in the face of humanity's utter desolation – unlike Neill, he has accepted his role as the herald of the end, and the decision to play it as a sort of detached amusement causes the character to resonate more than if he'd been played as an over the top madman. Rounding the out leads as the thematic bridge between the two, Julie Carmen's arc is one I've come to enjoy more on repeat viewing – at first, presented purely as a supporter of Cane and his work, she seems completely on board when it's all fiction. It's only as the movie unfolds and the prospect of what is being written becomes more real that she begins to genuinely fear what might be happening, and by the time she is fully aware of her role in it, it's too late to escape.

The movie is inspired by Lovecraft, and Cane's popularity is clearly 

modeled on Stephen King. Having said that, I'm still wondering 

if Jurgen Prochnow's appearance in this movie is deliberate 

Neil Gaiman cosplay or just a very happy accident.

Visually, the movie's effects work – including early work by Greg Nicotero – has largely held up well. I have to admit, I'm a bit of two minds about the otherworldly beings that are unleashed in the film's final act. Taken on their own, they're fairly well made monsters, and some designs do stand out nicely. The problem is, unfortunately, one that is a common refrain with Lovecraft-based cinema: for beings that are supposed to be completely beyond the realm of human comprehension as an ancient evil, they fall short. Nice to look at, but underwhelming compared to the horror they represent.

On the reverse of that, however, the make-up effects the movie applies in its later acts as humans are slowly taken over and corrupted by cosmic evil holds up very well. In this case, much of it is a case of 'less is more' working well, distorting the otherwise normal human form just enough to be disturbing but still recognizable. Like with The Thing, there were parts of this I went into intentionally trying to be more critical – with focus on one particular effect involving a contorted human form. To my pleasant relief, even on Blu-Ray, the effect still looks fairly well done.

"Nah, don't worry. It's cool. Just a little banged up.
I'll go home and sleep it off. It's fine."

In closing this trilogy, there's a part of me that's genuinely impressed Carpenter got to make this, particularly when he did. Just on its own nowadays it doesn't seem that shocking, but looked at at the time - when his reputation with the studio heads had seen better days - to take on an idea as ambitious as this one, playing with concepts of perception, belief, and existential horror with a generous dash of inspiration from an author whose work hadn't quite become fully mainstream at the time, and to play it out in a film that ends with the entire world succumbing to darkness as what may be humanity's last survivor weeps in despair is one Hell of a trick to pull off in a major studio movie.

It also doesn't make it too surprising to realize that the movie was met with generally middling reviews at the time, with people having issues in particular with the story. That the story is now considered one of the big reasons it has the following it does really helps cement this as a spiritual sibling with The Thing, both as examples where time would ultimately acquit Carpenter.

With that strangely upbeat note set to the extinction of humanity, it is time once again to close up operations for this October. There will be more work ahead soon, life has been hectic, but I'm finally starting to get things sorted out again, and doing these theme dives reminds me why I've missed this.

Until then, see you guys around and once again, have a Happy Halloween!