Beyond the Dunwich Horror

I must say that I was genuinely surprised with "Beyond the Dunwich Horror" - in a good way. I found this movie on a double-feature DVD in a second hand store, and the obvious Lovecraft reference in the title made me pick it up. I had initially very little expectations to the movie, but it turned out to be more than I had anticipated.

Sure, this is a low budget movie, but still, they managed to pull it off nicely enough, and had a good, overall coherent story with some nice references to Lovecraft, although it could be discussed whether or not they had taken Lovecraft's original work and stretched it a bit too far and too thin.

I am not going to get into a detailed synopsis of the storyline, but director Richard Griffin did manage to incorporate the story lines well enough and actually managed to pull off the differences in the timeline well and have them come together full circle at the end.

Effects-wise, then "Beyond the Dunwich Horror" is not making use of flashy high-end CGI effects. There is some special effects in the movie, and yes it might be a bit campy at times, but it does serve its purpose well enough, and does look adequate enough as well.

I wasn't familiar with the people cast for the various roles in the movie, so I thought it was nice with a breath of fresh air for a change, and without associating the faces with previous roles portrayed. This is not academy award-winning performances, but still, people did good jobs with their given roles.

There was just something very 1990's to the movie, the way it was shot, the way the story was told, and of course the music. Whether or not this was intentional, I know not, but it worked out well enough for my liking.

While "Beyond the Dunwich Horror" is not one of the best movie interpretations of H. P. Lovecraft's novels, then it is by far not amongst the worst either. It is a fairly enjoyable movie, but it just lacked that one last ingredient to make it fully stand out and become unique.

The casting and directing seemed straight from some community theatre, or High School level acting school. There was little or no attempt at subtlety, nor continuity. The acting was hyper melodramatic. The editing and scenes were choppy and awkward. It seems a sad attempt to capture Lovecraftian popularity, by very amateur filmmakers. This seems sadly what streaming services are now stocking their shelves with.

Lovecraft had such a delightfully rich way of describing the horror in his imagination, it is sad to see it butchered so. I recall being enraptured by an English Teacher reading to us from "Rats in the Walls"