Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

chris-scritchfield The movie is basically an attempt of making dark brooding version of Little Shop of horrors. The more you watch the more the similarities are going to come to light. From the creatures first feeding attempts to its reaction to blood. The lead character even shares a suckling seen similar to Rick morranis and audry.I will give it is sufficiently changed from the source material to not call it a copy it does fit in line as far as plot development

Michael Ledo While Olive (Anna Dawson) is diving at 1500 feet a sea creature lodges an egg in her suit. She takes it home and nurtures it in a what becomes a combination of "Alien" and "Little Shop of Horrors." They attempt to invoke HP Lovecraft with a "Mishatonic" (sic) diploma, but being misspelled (It should be Miskatonic) you have to wonder how knowledgeable these guys were. There are weak connections to the ancient world and gods with a ton of plot holes like, it they can live at both 1500 feet and in surface air, why are they just returning now? The film uses CG for some sea scenes. Olive's descent into what appears to be madness and mindless ramblings was poorly done with an explanation left in pieces, something that could have made the feature better using real flashback reenactments of the past instead of something that looked like an Egyptian kid's refrigerator art.Guide: F-word and nudity (Anna Dawson)

sam21462 First, the bad, and it is pretty bad. The CGI and green-screen work is simply atrocious. A lot of it does seriously remind one of a decade old video game, and not a good video game. The first ten minutes of the movie is dominated by it but if you hang in there, what you will find is something very surprising.Now the good, and there is a substantial amount of good to be found here.I'll start with a nod to the score which kept reminding me of something John Carpenter would have done and, to me, that is a very good thing. As the movie moves from its start as an action adventure/monster flick to a somber melodrama following our leads decent into madness, the score continues to keep the energy up through what I would term as very patient pacing.As a bit of balance to the poor CGI much of the practical effects were good. With some unabashed blood and various levels of body horror as well as a satisfactory rendering, it has plenty of payoff if blood and guts are your sort of thing. The monster was left largely unseen, another nod to Lovecraft as were it actually shown correctly, we the viewers would be driven mad by the sight of it. Nudge nudge wink wink. I found the acting and its direction to be solid, and at times quite good. While the somewhat dingy sister and the milquetoast boyfriend were a bit on the cliché eventual monster food variety the roles were played well and I found them to be believable enough.The story, ahhhh the story. For me this is where the movie is really a bit special. It has proved to be very very difficult to correctly put together a movie that captures the essence of the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. This one, I think, rather nailed it. It is not a tale of us verses it where, in the end, the monster is slain and the heroine gets away. It is a tale of a person who, unwittingly, pokes at something vast and terrible and pays the price with first their sanity and then their life. It is the story of a decent into madness brought about by contact with something that is beyond reason. When watching it one knows that this is not going to end well for anyone pretty early on and this is all part of the way Lovecraft wove his tales. Again, to reuse a phrase from earlier, all of this is told, as Lovecraft told his tales, with a horrific patience that draws one in to the mounting madness.I think for all fans of Lovecraft there was a complete geek out when the lead finally sinks deep into madness and starts describing the experience using entire passages of Lovecraft's work to do so. Placing Lovecraft's prose directly on to film is not an easy thing to pull off but here it was done quite well.All in all what we end up with is a movie that works very well if one is a fan of Lovecraft as the "mythos" part of the movie is, in my opinion, some of the best ever done which makes it much easier to forgive the terrible special effects. For those that are not already a fan of Lovecraft, however, there may be more of a disconnect as it is a patiently paced horror/drama book ended by some bad special effects.I would love to see those who were involved creatively on this project to be given the chance to bring what they seem to be able to do in a larger way. I would actually love to see this movie having been made with a substantial budget. Actually "getting" Lovecraft in a movie is a terrific thing, and not an easy thing to do. I would love to see it done in a more spectacular way.

whittakerben When I saw the DVD cover for this film I was expecting a SyFy channel level production and whilst the opening 10 mins of CGI didn't convince me otherwise I was pleasantly surprised to find a very competently put together take on Lovecraftian horror. The film is certainly low budget and as the producers on the 'Making of' DVD bonus feature state, they worked with what they had, using their own houses as location. Any of these shortcomings are overcome by the great cast, all of whom I have not seen before but did a really good job with the script. Anna Dawson is very convincing as the lead character Olive, slowly loosing her mind to the creature which seems to have some kind of psychic control over her. The characters of Ellie & Matt are also well played and the chemistry between them seems very authentic. There are also some great supporting cast members in there like Doctor Fletcher and Olive's friend Dara. All of the cast play their roles with a straight face which I think was important considering the crazy script. Where the film truly shines is in the practical creature effects which are used sparingly but build up the mystery around the creature. There is plenty of blood and guts for gore fans but it isn't extreme in anyway so fans of more psychological horror films will also be satisfied. The ending of the film takes things to completely insane levels and also surprised me considering the small scope the film had shown thus far and there is potential for a sequel there. As I said before the film is slightly let down by the opening CGI which isn't very good but I don't think it lets it down too much there. For fans of H.P. Lovecraft this is a must see.