Cthulhu

Saw Cthulhu, a modern film set in the famous Cthulhu mythos. The film sets up the elder-gods thing early by having a news reporter talk about rising sea levels over the opening credits. The protagonist, Russel, is introduced. He's a gay guy who escaped his back-woods home to teach at a prestigious university, where he is a professor of ancient religious history, a favorite occupation of Lovecraft protagonists. He is recalled back home by the sudden death of his mother. Russel returns to his home where he reunites with his father who runs some kind of cult (of course) which the whole town seems to be members of (of course.) He has an argument with his father about ancient religions and also about grand-children. I liked the disagreement because it hinted at a much longer, angrier, and deeper argument that had pushed Russel away to begin with. Anyway, Russel's sister seems like a more sympathetic character but then introduces Becky, her bleached and rouged friend, to Russel with obviously dubious ulterior motives. Russel rekindles a romantic relationship with his childhood friend.

The film has a throwback feel to me, evoking the extreme frustration of the horror films of the 80s. Most of the frustration stems from the smug conspiracy of silence, coupled with all kinds of small-town ugliness. There's a lot of talk of "you kind of people" mixed in with the smiling denials of complicity or knowledge. Horrible legal trouble is used as a weapon against Russel often. There's an infuriating sense of his real life being slowly destroyed. There's also an extremely troubling rape in the middle of the film which Russel gets over fairly quickly. This upset me greatly.

The imagery is fairly modern, copying Lynch a bit I think. There are inexplicable old men who suddenly appear and attack. There's a dream sequence with a fairly memorable scene of waving arms sticking through holes in a large crate. It's sometimes a bit cheap, as when Russel must navigate a sewer by the flash of his camera (and do creepy things show up? Of course creepy things show up.) There's a moment when Russel is being chased through a suburban neighborhood. He pauses to peek through a window and sees a boy watching an off-screen television. The blue reflected light of the TV evokes an underwater feel very nicely. These eerie, creepy scenes are a nice change of pace from the frustration of no one admitting that anything is amiss or even admitting that they're behaving in a pretty fucked up manner. All of this unpleasantness is softened somewhat by some genuinely heart-warming scenes of Russel and his lover. The relationship is set up in a slightly icky flashback, but becomes very believable and sweet by the end.

I generally liked this film. It was annoying, but it treated the Cthulhu thing well, not devolving into creature-spectacle or even into something so simple as a conspiracy. There's always something a little shadowy, a little unexplained. It keeps exactly what's going on nicely hidden, even until the end which is itself pretty ambiguous. It has a low-budget feel of being slightly lumpy, one scene being a bit jarring from the last. Often Russel will behave in an overly-crazed manner, shouting at his friends or talking down to them. I excuse this as realistic character flaws (and also the dude had just been raped for like half of the film) but it also contributes to the sometimes amateurish feel. An interesting film in the end, I guess. Not a slam-dunk, but definitely not bad.