Someday, H.P. Lovecraft might get a big-budget adaptation, but until then, it's B-movies all the way and this is as "B" as you can get, and I actually admire it for not trying to be more than that. Unfortunately, except for some good effects late in the film, there's not much here worth recommending. The 1970 film of the same title was mostly just inspired by the Lovecraft story; this version sticks a bit more closely to the original tale about the awful Whateley family and their blasphemous breeding of human woman and the demonic monster Yog-Sothoth in an attempt at opening up a portal for the horrific Old Ones to return to Earth. Wilbur Whateley (Re-Animator's Jeffrey Combs) is a drooling backwoods idiot (supposedly a 10-year-old who has aged 40 years physically) looking for a missing page in the evil book The Necronomicon which will allow him to finish the rite of re-entry.
What's been added to this version is a romantic lead couple, played by Griff Furst and Sarah Lieving, who are helping a Miskatonic University professor (Dean Stockwell) find the missing page before Combs does. There's lots of Lovecraft name-dropping; in addition to Miskatonic University and the Necronomicon, we meet Alhazred the Mad Arab, the author of that evil book, and Olaus Wormius, a decadent Necronomicon scholar. The decent opening sequence is right out of The Exorcist, there are nice effects in the climactic scene involving Yog-Sothoth's appearance, and an effective brief shot of an ancient Lovecraftian landscape. Furst, who sometimes looks like Peter Sarsgaard or the early Mickey Rourke, is good, but the rest of the cast is mediocre, including Stockwell (who played Wilbur in the 1970 film) who practically sleepwalks through his part. Very bad dialogue doesn't help anyone, and why they felt the need to transport Lovecraft's New England towns to the Bayou is beyond me--the change adds nothing interesting.
What's been added to this version is a romantic lead couple, played by Griff Furst and Sarah Lieving, who are helping a Miskatonic University professor (Dean Stockwell) find the missing page before Combs does. There's lots of Lovecraft name-dropping; in addition to Miskatonic University and the Necronomicon, we meet Alhazred the Mad Arab, the author of that evil book, and Olaus Wormius, a decadent Necronomicon scholar. The decent opening sequence is right out of The Exorcist, there are nice effects in the climactic scene involving Yog-Sothoth's appearance, and an effective brief shot of an ancient Lovecraftian landscape. Furst, who sometimes looks like Peter Sarsgaard or the early Mickey Rourke, is good, but the rest of the cast is mediocre, including Stockwell (who played Wilbur in the 1970 film) who practically sleepwalks through his part. Very bad dialogue doesn't help anyone, and why they felt the need to transport Lovecraft's New England towns to the Bayou is beyond me--the change adds nothing interesting.