Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Ricardo Daly The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

siderite Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Payne, Richard Lynch, David Warner, they all lend both weight and goofiness to the movies they play in. In this loosely Lovecraftian anthology, they don't disappoint. The stories have various degrees of quality in writing and acting, but the low budget high impact special effects and the overall atmosphere of the movie is quite satisfying.Written, directed and acted by different people, the three parts are basically different short films, wrapped around by a silly story of Lovecraft reading the Necronomicon in order to gain inspirations for his writing. Jeffrey Combs is playing Lovecraft. Just recently having seen another TV movie based on Lovecraft, it was fun to see him play another character in that one, as well, 16 years later.I recognized the second story as Cool Air, but it was kind of difficult to recognize The Rats in the Walls and The Whisperer in Darkness in the other two. While I deplore the low quality of the scripting, I applaud the attempt to adapt the material, rather than follow it exactly like it was written.Overall it will never be a great movie, but for a TV film inspired by Lovecraft, it is OK.

Paul Andrews Necronomicon starts in 1932 as writer H.P. Lovecraft (Jeffrey Combs) as learned that an order of Ontraggi Monks guard a copy of the legendary occult book the Necronomicon, Lovecraft manages to locate the vault where the Necronomicon is hidden & begins the read it...First he reads about 'The Drowned' in which a man named Edward De Lapoer (Bruce Payne) inherits an old hotel that has been abandoned for sixty years after the suicide of his ancestor Jethro De Lapoer (Richard Lynch) managed to bring his dead wife & son back to life using spells from the Necronomicon...The next story 'The Cold' is about newspaper reporter Dale Porkel (Dennis Christopher) who investigates the murder of several people which leads him to a boarding house & a certain Dr. Madden (David Warner) who has managed to prolong his life but with dire consequences...Finally Lovecraft reads 'The Whispers' about a female cop named Sarah (Signy Coleman) descent under an old warehouse where she finds herself in an ancient temple full of Bat creatures who feast on human flesh & need human brains to breed...This French & American co-production is a three part horror anthology film based around three short stories by H.P. Lovecraft who also features in the fictional wraparound segment, the wraparound segment & the third story 'The Whispers' was directed by Brian Yuzna while the first story 'The Drowned' was directed by the French born Christophe Gans while the second story was directed by the Japanese born Shûsuke Kaneko. The script for Necronomicon uses various Lovecraft themes & ideas but the individual stories don't really represent their supposed source materials but I still found them all enjoyable in different ways. I think it's quite nice to watch a horror film that has no annoying teenagers in it, that isn't a remake of anything & isn't a typically predictable slasher & to that end I did enjoy this although it could have been better. Each of the stories has an air of the supernatural about it with the first in particular, each story features the Necronomicon somehow but I would say that 'The Cold' is maybe the best of the three with 'Whispers' not far behind it & while 'The Drowned' is far from bad it's probably the least of the three stories. There's certainly plenty of gore & monsters here & the effects men have a blast bringing all sorts of slimy monsters, people melting, severed limbs & splattery creations to life. At a little over 90 minutes each story lasts the 25 minute range & are all suitably different although I think the twist endings could have been a bitter & played more for dramatic impact.Although based on short stories by Lovecraft the adaptations retain little of their literally source, 'The Drowned' is an adaptation of The Rats in the Wall from 1924 only retains the De Lapoer name & something under a house (a city rather than a monster though), 'The Cold' is adapted from Cool Air published in 1931 & is the closest to the original story while 'Whispers' is adapted from The Whispers in Darkness from 1928 that deals with rumours of aliens hiding in the hills of Vermont rather than cops & old warehouses. Fans of other Yuzna produced Lovecraft adaptations such as Re-Animator (1985) & From Beyond (1986) will be happy to see the same sort of visual style & the same sort of gory special effects, from people melting to piles of severed limbs to people's faces being pulled off to people with the backs of their heads missing to some bat like alien monsters to a huge tentacled monster thing & more besides as the effects men throw plenty of blood & slime our way. The dark Gothic setting or 'The Drowned' is very nice & atmospheric while the more sedate setting of 'The Cold' works too but the somewhat surreal setting of 'Whispers' looks a little theatrical with it's bright neon lighting & smoke everywhere.With a supposed budget of about $4,000,000 this appears to have had some money spent on it & while the effects & sets probably cost a fair bit the stories do feel a little empty at times, Necronomicon feels like a showcase for the effects men rather than the talents of Lovecraft. The acting is pretty good, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Payne, Richard Lynch & David Warner add a little marquee value for genre fans.Necronomicon is a good film, it's not a perfect film but at least it's something different from the teen slashers, remakes & giant Shark creature features that litter video shop shelves, I suppose it's an acquired taste & the stories might have been fleshed out more for dramatic purposes but it looks great, has lots of slime & gore & is well worth a watch.

jmbwithcats I really enjoyed this movie. Great stories done rather well.I just watched this movie today after trying to get my hands on it for several years, so here is my fresh dead review.This is truly a brave attempt at translating HP Lovecraft's works into film, a truly difficult and daunting task to do with any skill. Attempts to illustrate the alluded-to but barely observed horror of most of the genre tend to fail because the substance is not generally visual. It is a state of mind. But I was pleasantly surprised by this movie and I will explain why.The house we begin at where the Necronomicon is rediscovered is atmospheric and the directing is also rather visceral and refreshing. The camera work is very creative and flexible utilizing many different styles, a lot of askew profile shots or detached views from above, even the use of black and white to denote a tragic flashback is skillfully used here.The music is also quite nice. The casting equally talented. The story of a man whose family is taken from him, he turns from God, and a strange demonic creature comes to him, bringing strange solace in the form of the ancient book: The Necronomicon, where the man discovers a ritual to bring his family back from the dead. The man utters archaic iambic pentameter, tossing his own blood upon the pentagram. "That which is not dead can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die, In his lair Cthulhu waits dreaming."And though his family does return, they return in a monkey's paw sort of damnation and terror, but why? Why the extent of this just to say, "Gotcha!" in a truly horrifying manner? To extinguish the light, any semblance of hope, or effort. Indeed we are speaking of the Necronomicon, a cursed book brought to man by the truly damned.The third story has music I know I have heard somewhere before, somewhere not too long ago I might add, but I just can't place it! Maybe on an episode of Dexter? Some of the lines are so cheesy but entertaining, like this little jewel."I just came by to watch you practice your flute playing, only you're going to practice on my instrument."Also unlike most horror these days, it is not hidden it is not behind a screen it is not off camera, it is close up, visceral. You really feel it the way horror is meant to be felt.

scobbah I have to admit that I have not read any of Lovecraft's works, hence I cannot include any comparisons between the stories to the film in my verdict.Although films based on books rarely meet expectations, there are those which are a great and sometimes they are even better than the books. I suppose fans of Lovecraft's works will be inclined to support the former case as I find it difficult to imagine any fan possibly enjoying this film. I was restless, constantly looking at the clock and tried my best to hang in there until the credits rolled just for the hell of it. This film is neither coherent nor interesting, but just loose tales cut and edited together with nothing that catches your attention or interest.I would like to keep myself short, but I advise anyone to stay away from this horrible film. It is not even good enough for time-killing! 3/10