H.P. Lovecraft's Monster Portal

Right, well I stumbled upon the 2022 horror movie titled "Monster Portal", and seeing that the movie brandished H. P. Lovecraft's name on the cover, and having rather interesting cover, I must admit that I was intrigued.

Did I harbor much of any expectations to the movie? No, not really, because I had never heard about is before watching it.

And what a dumpster fire this was. First of all, this movie has nothing to do with H. P. Lovecraft, aside from the fact that writers Matthew B. C., Scott Jeffrey and Mario von Czapiewski opted to put Cthulhu into their movie. Yeah, this story has never even been anywhere near being spawned by the great H. P. Lovecraft himself. And just because you opt to put something that Lovecraft created into a movie doesn't really give you the right to put "H. P. Lovecraft's" as part of your movie title. But hey, anything to lure in the audience, right?

The storyline in "Monster Portal" was not a great one, not even by a longshot. It was sluggish and slow paced, with nothing overly exciting to offer the audience that manages to endure the staggering 80 minutes of nonsense that "Monster Portal" turned out to be.

The special effects and CGI in the movie were so-so. Some of the CGI was actually fair enough, while some was just taken straight out of a 1990s computer game. And how wonderfully clever to make the scenes so dark that you can hardly see any of the special effects when they were actually on the screen. Yeah, this formula doesn't really work, and if anything it just makes attempts of horror turn into a parody.

The acting performances in "Monster Portal" were fair enough, I will say that much. I wasn't familiar with the cast in the movie, and that is normally something I enjoy when I watch a movie. But the actors and actresses literally had nothing worthwhile to work with here.

I got suckered in by the "H. P. Lovecraft's" part of the title and ten tentacles and faceless creature on the cover. Make sure you don't do the same mistake, because "Monster Portal" is not worth the effort. And seeing a CGI rendering of Cthulhu's head shrouded in 90% darkness hardly constitutes a movie as being Lovecraftian.

My rating of "Monster Portal" lands on a two out of ten stars.

This poor attempt of adapting a Lovecraft story is a slap in the face of H. P. himself. The acting, camerawork, sound, lighting are so bad that you think you are watching a first graders school project. There is literally not ONE jumpscare moment at all and the plot is thinner than paper. The fx (if you can call it that) are so amateuristic that nobody beliefs this stuf. The actors involved should rethink their career paths because none of them are convincing. How is it possible that people get money to make this kind of rubbisch. Was this funded or some daddy project anyway it is, as I said, a discrace to the works of H. P. Lovecraft!

This movie is slower than watching oil paint dry. The sound is off. The actors seem like they didn't even want to be there. This goes by 2 other names which you just know it gonna suck.

How did this ultra-dull movie get financed? How did the director manage to make one hour and eighteen minutes seem to drag on...and on...and on? Did the several actors appearing in this stupid "Lovecraftian" tale drink codine cough syrup before every take? Everything moves in slow motion, the cult members are wearing cheap hooded taffeta costumes from Party City, and there are about 20 seconds of creature effects which you can see in the trailer. Avoid, this stinks like Cthulhu farts. One star, which is being generous.

Good reviews on this one (for a change). Yes, it's a total snoozefest for 45 minutes. The only it has going for it in that time is a super creepy old lady. Then it switches from a grieving daughter returning to her family home yawn into a demonic cult story involving mindbending concepts. It does finally take on some atmospheric flavor at that point, as well as a horror story. And it's pretty good from that point forward. It's just brief, & hard to forgive the first 45 minutes. Script still wasn't great, but I liked the effects. I wish the whole movie had been that last 25 minutes & they had done more with that instead of rushing it.