This could have been a mostly mediocre movie that killed the time but was never anything special. I liked the bones of the concept, and taking on a more female cosmic fear of being mother to monsters.
But the score irredeemably dropped by mixing up the mythos AND by having a book of Lovecraft stories in the movie without explanation. Like, was Lovecraft actually a prophet and all these people clued into the truth via his writings? And since I was already mad at that, I was cheesed off that it was very obviously from the public library, but on the old man's shelf as if it were a collectible.
The acting is bad, but about on par with cheesy horror. The script certainly doesn't do them any favors, and the directing is mostly boring but then tries way too hard. The pacing is awful, and the 'creepiness' is from some flailing tentacles and over-the-top 'bizazrre' reactions. The practical Deep One effects on the community members - of which there were not enough to be properly inspired by Shadow Over Innsmouth - looked like they came from Spirit Halloween.
So, what would have normally been a merely lame movie is kind of an insult to the Lovecraft genre. Maybe the writers should have done more than skimmed the Wiki about the mythos to get their ideas.
