The Thing on the Doorstep

First of all I have never been a fan of Lovecraft, alhough I have been a horror fan almost all of my 74 years, and I have read hundreds of horror books, possibly thousands. (Favorite author at SIX: Edgar Allan Poe.) I decided, how bad can this movie possibly be? This is most boring horror movie I have ever seen. The only thing remotely "frightening" was a woman tied to a chair; believe me it was NOT scary, just ridiculous. But. still I tried for an hour, until I was ready to fall asleep at 1:00 PM, after having a nice lunch while watching this. Worse acting and directing in a movie, in my 62 years of watching horror movies. I give it a ZERO.

At times this seemed endless. What was the attraction of that ne'er-do-well guy who is the center of all this. And why did the friend love him so much when he has contributed nothing but pain? And what are the motivations of the super-natural characters? I needed some flow to this, some sort of direction. And the last few seconds? How very trite and unfulfilling. I'm a big Lovecraft fan and I didn't see much to enhance the written page.

I'm so used to movies based on Lovecraft's stories being utter crap that I went into this one expecting I'd be turning it off a few minutes later... but surprise! It was a pretty darned good take on its source material. It's obviously micro-budget and stylized to make up for it. A lot of the tale is told in narration... but I'd MUCH rather have that than a lot of awful CGI attempting to visualize things the story only hinted at. It's a subtle telling, one that's likely to draw the dreaded 'boring' descriptor from less patient audiences... but whatever. The Thing On The Doorstep is actually one of my favorite of Lovecraft's lesser Mythos stories... there are some genuinely creepy ideas going on in it and this movie caught on to them and even expanded them in ways that I felt were in keeping with the spirit of the tale. For instance, giving the protagonist a wife and child (not in the original story) was not just a tacked detail... their presence made the nature of the threat more personal and immediate and brought up new dimensions to how the goings on might have been interpreted. One thing that is particularly strong about the movie is the acting. The actors are not the usual crop of 20-somethings that get shoveled into most horror films. The characters here are older and with that carry a certain gravity the story deserves.

Just so I don't come off as a shill... there were a few things that bothered me. The movie takes place in modern times, which I was fine with... but there were places where the writer chose to used the language of the original story and those bits of dialogue feel a bit clunky. Thankfully most of that is early on and then stops... though it comes up again during the reading of Edward's note at the end. Also (and this is me being a picky Lovecraft fan) while the actress playing Asenath was perfectly fine and doesn't really appear that much on-screen, I did find myself wishing they'd gone the extra mile and found someone with a touch more of the 'Innsmouth look'. My last complaint is with the depiction of the 'thing' of the title. I know it's a low budget project but I wished they'd done it differently. As it is the camera spends to much time on the 'thing' and its really not ready for its closeup. I think they could have gotten away with the less-is-more approach that had been used for the visions and dream sequences in the earlier parts of the movie.

Still, I'm impressed... by the directing, the writing and the acting. I'd love to see these folks take a shot at 'Dreams In The Witch House' and erase my memory of the awful Stuart Gordon version.

I review this from the standpoint of having read most of Lovecraft's work. As with all of his screen adaptations, this story should have been true to the period. Lovecraft's time, was well suited to his Gothic horror. It's hard in the 21st century to translate this. That being said, I thought this movie was more faithful to the script, than most screen adaptations of his work. One scene involving the narrator's wife, does stretch credulity. But otherwise, the producer and director deserve credit, for being faithful in spirit to Lovecraft. Most of what I have seen in the adaptations, is camp at an extreme level that to me is a disgrace to his memory. I give this an 8, due to it being more true to Lovecraft than any such adaptation I have ever seen.

Of course it is impossible to be entirely faithful to a literary work when adapting to film, but The Thing on the Doorstep did an excellent job. What changes were made improved the story for the medium. The cinematography and narrative technique was compelling and eerie. If you're a fan of H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos fiction I think you'll really enjoy this retelling. However, if you're not familiar with Lovecraft and aren't familiar with this story, you might find it difficult to get into or even follow. The same is true of the story itself, which demands more than one reading before it shows you all of its secrets. This is certainly a subtle and engaging film that should be enjoyed if not adored by fans of the Mythos, though it probably isn't for everyone.