John Carpenter's The Thing saw the director at the height of his powers, hitting an artistic peak that was almost inevitable when he burst onto the scene with Halloween in 1978, and helping him ride a creative high directing critical hits and cult classics like Big Trouble in Little China and They Live throughout the '80s. Unfortunately, after a string where it seemed like he could do no wrong, he started churning out misfires like Vampires (said one critic: "ridiculous without being awful enough to be hilarious.") and bafflingly bad films like Ghosts of Mars ("it's distressingly amateurish and hackneyed to the point of absurdity.") before he retired from filmmaking in the late 2000's. If you look at Carpenter's IMDB page, every casual fan can notice a distinct point where he went from brilliant auteur to the train going off the rails. 1995 was his buffer zone with both this film and Prince of Darkness showing Carpenter still in his element but struggling to pack every frame with rich visuals coupled with a tight story. Instead we only get a passable visuals build around a serviceable story.
John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness (he always puts his personal stamp before the title like a true auteur) starts with John Trent (Sam Neill) being forced kicking and screaming (and in a straight jacket) to a mental asylum. In flashbacks, we see he was an insurance investigator. Having lunch with a colleague, a psychotic fan of "Sutter Cane" wildly attacks him with a axe before being shot down by the police. The man was Cane's agent who went mad after he read one of his books. The publisher for Cane's books (an always welcome Charlton Heston, though he's only in one scene) says that he disappeared, and Trent, realizing that the covers to his book form a map to New Hampshire (this is where the film really got my attention), goes with editor Linda (Julie Carmen) to find Cane. After a number of trippy hallucinations including seeing the same bike rider at night several times, they get to the city they thought was fictional. Trent believes it all to be staged, but Linda says the exact replica of "Hobbs End" was not part of the plan. After about another hour (of this 96 minute film) of strange dreams and vivid imagery, Trent has the manuscript in his hand that he returns to the world. As he's in the padded cell, "In the Mouth of Madness" has become a worldwide bestseller, being adapted to the screen by New Line Cinema and John Carpenter (meta). Upon being released by rioters of some sort, he goes to watch the events of the last week on screen, cackling in delight.
Siskel and Ebert both gave this film a disappointed negative rating. Ebert said the premise certainly had a lot of potential mileage but the narrative fell victim to too many jump scares and creature effects. Siskel said he didn't even think the premise could have gone that far on it's own. He felt like it was a poor Stephen King imitation (especially because that was what Carpenter was going for in naming his horror author "Sutter Cane"). I agree mostly with Ebert. There are only a few creature effects, mostly with the ghouls and goblins in shadows, nothing close to the amount used in The Thing, so I'm not sure why he said that honestly. But the narrative ark follows a very strict structure. The ending is never in question, you can predict what will happen with ease. Sam Neill, fresh off his leading role in Jurassic Park, was definitely trying to establish himself as a serious actor, does alright but not anything memorable. His character goes through the traditional "skeptic ark" where he doesn't believe he's losing it, and he sells it well. He actually keeps doubting the series of events much longer than most of these other archetypes who have to be convinced of the supernatural events happening. He still believes all this is fake for about 90 minutes, even after Sutter Cane shows him a portal to hell that Cane predicts he'll look at because he is the author of Trent's story. It's not until he sees the film adaptation released in theatres and begins laughing hysterically at it that we know he's given in. The best aspect of the film is the ambiguity. Carpenter doesn't approach the film with a standard "was it all a dream?" cliche that could have been very obnoxious, but it has you questioning mainly if Cane is controlling all the events. Was Trent's story already written, is it in the process of being written, is Trent just a pawn or a protagonist? All handled very well, and never doesn Carpenter hold the audience's hand. And as an end of the world film, it's certainly interesting we don't see the apocalypse outside of the street corner with the movie house on it. This movie's an economical 96 minutes and it did its job well. You're in and your out just like that. These are small victories but not earth shattering. Overall, the film is OK, and I talked about it less than I usually do with these blog posts, but discussing John Carpenter's work is always fun; I will definitely discuss Halloween next Halloween. This should have been Carpenter's sendoff; he should have quit while he was ahead. Too bad he didn't go out on a high note.
Rating: **1/2 out of 4
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