#175: The Whisperer in Darkness, the movie
The HP Lovecraft Historical Society does it again, in sound this time
This review was originally posted to Twitter on August 30, 2019.
Initial release: March 12, 2011
Director: Sean Branney
Lovecraft nerds are a special breed. Maybe it’s the uncompromising starkness of Howard Philips Lovecraft’s work that attracts them; or the fact that Lovecraft, while not totally unknown in the mainstream, is still a relatively obscure figure compared to, say, Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King. Either way, the HP Lovecraft Historical Society’s second independent film, an adaptation of The Whisperer In Darkness, is obviously intended for existing fans, not newcomers.
After the success of The Call of Cthulhu it’s not a surprise that they’d do another film, but this time they’ve picked one of his lesser-known stories. While it’s not as obscure as, say, The Rats in the Walls, it doesn’t have the prestige of the likes of At the Mountains of Madness. (Now there’s a movie I’d like to see!)
That doesn’t stop them from making a pretty game attempt at an adaptation. That being said, this is somewhat of an expanded take on the story, unlike the faithful adaptation that was Call of Cthulhu. In this case, where Lovecraft’s story ends, this movie keeps going. Matt Foyer returns from his stellar performance in Cthulhu to play the role of Albert Wilmarth, a stuffy professor of folklore who receives proof that long-standing legends and myth about creatures living in the hills of Vermont are literally true. He goes off to visit a local man he’s been corresponding with, hoping to hear more, and gets way, way more than he ever could have bargained for. In the original story, he escapes and returns home; in the film, the third act has him befouling some evil plans to open a portal. The logic behind the addition is solid: Lovecraft was better at starting stories than ending them, and when adapting Whisperer to film it really lacked a decent climax. At least in Call of Cthulhu there was that final act with Cthulhu himself rising from the sea and getting boated in the face.
So we get a wonderfully goofy scene where our hero, who apparently knows how to fly a biplane, gets into a dogfight with angry flying brain-faced crabmen. It’s precisely the kind of silly finale that befits a film attempting to mimic 1930s sci-fi and horror cinema. And they succeeded quite well in that, by the way. Director Sean Branney’s camerawork is clever and evocative, and he makes good use of light and shadow, in keeping with its stylistic influences — such as Universal’s Frankenstein and Dracula, among others.
In keeping with mimicking the advances in filmmaking technology of the 1930s, the special effects have leaped ahead of 2005’s Call of Cthulhu, and while the film still has that high-quality digital film look that belies the attempted 1930s aesthetic (and in a 16:9 aspect ratio to boot) the framerate has been reduced, giving it a less “budget tv movie” quality. That being said, there’s only so much you can do with a limited budget, even with backing by Sandy Petersen (the creator of the Call of Cthulhu tabletop game, but more famously as a level designer for id Software’s classic shooters Doom and Quake), and so we’re back to the miniatures again (not a bad thing) as well as greater use of CGI that sticks out like a sore thumb, largely towards the end.
The acting is generally good — Foyer’s theater skill carries well here, and Barry Lynch, a recurring name in Star Trek media, has a creepy, alien laugh that makes his character of Henry Akely far less obviously human.
Final thoughts: it’s not the story I would have picked to adapt. (My personal choice, with a budget in mind, would have been The Shunned House.) But it’s a solid adaptation that once again achieves what the HP Lovecraft Historical Society set out to do.
