Sam Neill changes his accent like four times in this

Definitely had a few expectations going into this knowing it was John Carpenter but dude... what the hell? I was hilariously unaware of how psychological this was. But also so fun. But also so unsettling?? Still processing but I really dig this.

John Carpenter fuses lurking Lovecraftian madness with Stephen King psychological terror, resulting in this New England nightmare tentacle jam that’s, at least for me, totally perfect. 

Equal parts cerebral and visceral with apocalyptic anxieties riding high, In the Mouth of Madness was a video store staple for me in my teens and very well may be my favorite horror picture of the 90’s, a dreamy ride into hellish paperback nightmare rhetoric—filled with goopy KNB effects, one of my favorite Carpenter scores, Sam Neill absolutely killing it as usual, and an ending for the ages as far as I’m concerned.

“Do you read Sutter Cane?”

Part fiction, part reality, all nightmare. 

The new 4K scan on Scream Factory’s new blu looks damn fine and I couldn’t be happier this finally got the collectors edition treatment it deserves.

92

It's exhilarating to watch Carpenter utilize his skills as a peerless craftsman against a changing world of scare tactics and an evolving horror landscape. Like an old dog teaching itself new tricks. Terrifying and utterly engrossing.

what if god was a hack horror writer?

haha, seriously, what if though?

what if...

Sam Neill is wonderful.

The editing, especially in the final act, is superb, skillfully collapsing the distinction between the real and the dream.

Although this is obviously an homage to both Lovecraft and Stephen King, it also works as a pointed critique of American mass media, of the way we senselessly open our minds to people who do not have our best interests in mind, and leave ourselves vulnerable to poisonous fantasies and harmful delusions.

[Pauses, looks around at the millions of Americans who have embraced QAnon.]

Yeah, that checks out.

love that carpenter opens & closes this with super-cheesy buttrock theme music, it's so fucking great.

"I think, therefore you are."

No idea why this isn’t more highly regarded. Absolutely and completely rocks.

"A reality is just what we tell each other it is."
"God's not supposed to be a hack horror writer."

The original "damn my life a movie." A metafictional cosmic horror story that starts as a small-town gothic conspiracy (like Dead & Buried but paperback genre novelists instead of zombies) before bleeding into a series of Italian nightmare logic horror setpieces that then fold in on themselves as they struggle with the contradictory nature of trying to contain cosmic horror inside an entertainment product.

Full discussion on episode 131 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

the sutter cane books are an analog for the taylor swift Eras Tour….
….o! the unspeakable horrors!!!!!

The widescreen compositions of the middle third are obviously quite striking, Carpenter and his DP giving his subjects so much space that they're dwarfed by their surroundings. The terrifyingly towering church and even the main street of the town itself, everything is domineering and suffocating and terrifying. What bumps this up to something truly masterful, though, is the editing in the final third. The film becomes this freakish whirlwind of unnerving nonsense, time and place disappearing and reappearing in the blink of an eye. Thrilling stuff. I didn't even mind the "meta" self-reflexive narrative trappings which so often like nails on a chalkboard to me. It's all executed so well. @TheHorrorMaster indeed.