The Dunwich Horror (2008 TV Movie)
3/10
Disappointed.
25 April 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Some of the cast choices gave me hope. Dean Stockwell was in the 1970 adaptation of the Lovecraft classic, and there has been some law passed that Jeffrey Combs has to be in every Lovecraft adaptation made after 1980, I think. Sadly, the two guys who you might have heard of are barely extended cameos. Then again, so is much of Lovecraft's story, which only takes up about 14 of the 1:45 running time of this turkey.

Fans of Lovecraft know this story. A human woman mates with the elder God, Yog-Sothoth, having a pair of twins, a human looking Wilbur who ages dramatically in ten years, and a hideous monster that eats people. Sadly, they are only in the movie for a brief period, and Combs isn't nearly trying his best. (Imagine him saying. "Hey, I've been on Star Trek! I don't need to do this Lovecraft garbage anymore!")

Most of the rest of this film is our star-crossed lovers searching for the missing page of the Necromonicon, a lot of name-dropping from other Lovecraft stories. Ugh. A romance in a Lovecraft story? No, in a Lovecraft story, everyone usually goes insane and is sent to an asylum.

Combs is probably closer to the way Lovecraft wrote Wilbur Whatley in the original story, but so what? It seems they realized they had to stretch a 44 page story into a hour and half feature on the skiffy channel.

Also, nothing in the story really emphasizes the horror of this situation. There are a bunch of alien Gods waiting to get back into our universe and kill everyone... Except for one line, there's no discussion of the philosophical implications of it.
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