Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Nonureva Really Surprised!

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

siderite I can imagine the frustration of Hollywood producers trying to transmute a rich and reputed mythos into money by using the same old recipes that work for any other concept and failing miserably in the case of Lovecraft. But they have to try.Such an attempt is this adaptation of the short story with the same name. They start with the wise and nutty professor and his sexy assistant, join forces with an unbeliever and proceed through bad CGI to make him believe before he can use the knowledge that he already had to defeat the monster that had no chance to win in the first place. Yeah, the script is a mess, especially considering that The Dunwich Horror is one of the more classically good vs evil Lovecraft stories.However, that doesn't mean the film cannot be entertaining. As a nod to the 1970 version, Dean Stockwell plays again for the good team, while Jeffrey Combs is a really convincing Wilbur. The horror of the possible opening of the portal to the Old Ones is rendered well, yet everything else is cheesy in a "let's make some money" way that disgusts me. Yog-Sothoth take all money grabbing Hollywood people! I hated the entire useless romantic liaison added, as well as the "team" aspect that never existed in the original material and was put here only to standardize the story to something the public is used to.Bottom line: in the end, the Lovecraft aspect of the film is minimal, even if they kept the general plot of the story. It is the soul that they couldn't grasp. And it is strange, too, as Lovecraft is usually tending to the needs of the superego, distressed by "unnatural" events or beings; it should be easy to put that into a movie. I just don't think they get it! You need to make your viewers feel dirty inside for watching the film. That's the actual point of Lovecraft stuff!

Robert J. Maxwell It opens with a childbirth at home. The light is eerie. We see a woman in bed screaming horribly while she stares at her swollen belly. The attendants goggle as parturition proceeds. The camera pans around, never holding still. The cuts are instantaneous. A glistening black snake crawls up an attendant's arm.The rest of the movie -- as much of it as I was able to bear before an attack of restless legs syndrome set in -- follows the same template. There is hardly a pause for ordinary conversation. One shocking horror follows another, accompanied by loud music and diverse grotesqueries.There's a rural family involved. They all have bizarre appearances. The family head sits there cackling while skinning some kind of black-furred animal, maybe a cat or a skunk. A whirligig of a woman is bald except for a long fringe of blond hair.Dean Stockwell looks normal enough as the chief investigator of that "portal" that opened up during the childbirth. Stockwell was the chief investigator of a previous version of "The Dunwich Horror", filmed some thirty or forty years earlier. His assistant, Sarah Lieving, is pretty and thoroughly glamorized. I imagine she'll wind up strapped to a table in some dank cellar. There is a snooty expert on the mysterious Necromicon, a book that contains the spell that opens and closes "portals." He's pretty normal too, although he is, as I say, kind of disdainful and snooty. I hope he gets sacrificed.I've sometimes puzzled over H. P. Lovecraft, who wrote this tale, along with other stories of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe had a theory of literature -- throw everything else out the window and go for the effect. Logic counts for nothing. Imagine Poe and Alfred Hitchcock chatting about this. But H. P. Lovecraft seems to have taken this theory to its extreme. In one of his stories, nothing happens except that a guy wakes up in some underground chamber and finds his way to the surface. It's spooky but there is no substance to it.This movie stinks, a pointless exercise in ominousness and computer-generated effects. Any successful horror story begins in more or less placid normality and works its way into the abnormal. Look at "The Exorcist" or "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Shining" for good examples. Well, I'll mention Val Lewton's work at RKO in passing. This one begins with junk and, I expect, ends the same way.Recommended for self-haters, the guilt-ridden, those recently emerged from an eremetic existence, the irretrievably mad, and toddlers who have never seen a movie before.

trashgang If you put Dunwich in your title and add Witches to it then you are sure that it will sell. And when one old horror is already titles The Dunwich Horror then some people will think it's a remake. But not alone that, if you use the word Necronomicom then you automatically think of Lovecraft. And knowing that Lovecraft's short story The Dunwich Horror lays in the public domain, well, hell breaks loose (no pun intended). The acting is okay, we do have some well known names, Jeffrey Combs (re-animator), Dean Stockwell (The Dunwich Horror 1970) and Griff Furst. But names are not enough. From the start you know this is going to be so badly wrong. The possessed one, well, she just has colored contact lenses. Then she gets CGI wings. It's cold in the room, remember Exorcist. Her voice, remember Evil Dead, the pyramid is some kind of puzzle box, remember Hellraiser. But what makes this flick a turkey is one of the worst CGI that I have seen for a modern horror. Sparks shooting from fingers, soooooooooo eighties, It never was scary or bloody. It's just about incantations. well, do I have an incantation:"go away bad movie go away..."

johannes2000-1 I used to read Lovecraft in my early days and I remember being absolutely fascinated by the creepy atmosphere of his dark, menacing world. Movie adaptations never fail to disappoint me however, probably it's very difficult to translate his grotesque fantasies to the big screen. With this one it's no different. You can applaud them for trying to stick close to Lovecraft, but the flaws of this production are so abundant that it's hard to find anything positive to say.First of all: the special effects are terrible on all accounts, from the silly fake tentacles of the supposed monster that stretch out to the victims, and the flashes of a big sharp-toothed jaw that's supposed to belong to the mighty monster Cthulhu, up to the CGI in the last half hour that's supposed to conjure up an orgiastic climax but turns out even faker than fake.The acting seemed over all mediocre and uninspired. Dean Stockwell obviously didn't want to bother too much and just went through the (few) motions that were required of him. Jeffrey Combs is like a piece of Lovecraft furniture that you apparently cannot do without when you do a Lovecraft-adaptation, and in this capacity he did okay. The main parts are for Sarah Lieving and Griff Furst as a love couple (is that genuine Lovecraft material?? I doubt that!). Sarah Lieving is (or has to play) a bit of a stern and stiff lady, she sure is good-looking but didn't convince me a bit as the supposed fanatic supernatural witch-hunter, she's far too restrained and civilized.But I was pleasantly surprised with Griff Furst. I didn't know him yet but he impressed me as a talented and very natural actor with a good sense of timing and a definite sparkle of humour in his eyes - and very good-looking to boot! The part of the well-bred and educated professor who's reluctant to get drawn into this supernatural adventure but at last bravely makes the best of it, fitted him like a glove.All in all this seems like a waste of some good material (original story, Stockwell and Furst), I rank it a meagre 3 out of 10.