The Thing on the Doorstep

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.

I wanted to like it, as I do every HPL movie I come across.

And the actors all try. They're not nearly as bad as many of the budget outfit butcheries of Lovecraft stories.

But even though the effort is there, it's still not a very good movie.

Not sure why people say it's a faithful adaption. I didn't find it really even close to the original story. I guess they're using other butchered Lovecraft stories as the yardstick. Maybe it's just because that's a shorter HPL story and there's just not enough story content to fill around 1.5 hours.

In my opinion, unless you're a hardcore Lovecraft fan, you can pass on this one.

What really made me get into this picture was the fact that I had that wonderful tingling working up my spine into my psyche, a quality you don't see in horror movies much anymore. The scenery, the music and the fantasy sequences all made for a fairly well made horror film. The use of not so famous actors made the story line more believable too. Of course there a lot of unexplained circumstances to the point where you didn't know you were dealing with the supernatural or just the ramblings of a not quite all there antagonist, as in Edward. I'm glad I watched this one. There aren't too many out there that I'll give the time to.

I am a huge Lovecraft fan, and when I happened to come across "The Thing on the Doorstep" I must admit that I found myself instantly curious about the movie, especially since I had never heard about this movie in any way. But to be truthfully honest, then I was also somewhat hesitant about actually watching it, fearing that it would be suffering as most other Lovecraft adaptations do, and not really living up to the writer's product.

"The Thing on the Doorstep" turned out to be a very slow paced movie, and the fact that they changed the time setting of the movie, just took away some of the time period charm that adds so much to the theme of Lovecraft's writing. So it was sort of difficult to really get into this movie.

The acting in the movie was adequate, although there wasn't anyone in particular that stood out as being more memorable than the others. People were doing good jobs with their given roles and characters, but were somewhat hindered by the script and the pacing of the movie.

So was this a good addition to the adaptations of Lovecraft's immortal work? Hardly so. Sure, it had certain aspects and elements to it that had that particular Lovecraftian feel to it. But the whole picture wasn't particularly impressive.

This is hardly a movie that I will be returning to watch for a second time, because the movie just lacked appeal and didn't have enough solid contents to sustain more than a single viewing - provided you make it through the entire first viewing.

"The Thing on the Doorstep" scores a mere 3 out of 10 stars rating from me.

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.