Movie Review: In the Mouth of Madness 1994

This is what I think of the person who translated the name of that movie

In the Mouth of Madness is the last movie in the trilogy films made by John Carpenter. Interesting or not. The translate name for portuguese (from Portugal no Brazil) is called "A Biblia de Satanás" and translating that title to english is something like... Satan's Bible. WTF........ I mean the only way I can explain this is this image over here.....

Why?? This has nothing to do with Satan or Christian Religion. This is based on  Lovecraft - the tile at least is dedicated to "At the Mountains of Madness". I am very dissapointed. Even the brazlians translated "À Beira da Loucura" which could be roughly translated as the name in english. RIDICULOUS.


Well now for the movie...

The story stars in the end... yeah right. The story begins the psychiatric Dr Wrenn (David Warner) talks with John (Sam Neill - Jurasic Park!) for the reasons of his "visit" to the looney bin - Then the real story begins.

John is an insurance investigator taking a new case about a claim made by a publishing company. As he sits at lunch he is attacked by man wielding after being asked if has read Sutter Cane. The man is then shot by the police. Later on he meets with the publishing director Jackson Harglow  who asks if he can investigate  the dissapearance of the most famous horror novelist. John and Cane's editor Linda (Julie Carmen) will accompany him.

Well, it seems Sutter Cane is almost unknown and nobody knows where he lives but he sells even more than Stephen King. Funny that the cover of the books remind me of some covers by Richard Laymon books. I can say that the artist is the same.

Moving on to the tale...

Linda explains that the stories of Cane are know to cause disorientation, memory loss and paranoia. (He is better than King - probably Lovecraft). Of course our "hero" doesn't believe a word saying that this all must be a way to sell more books. But nevertheless he must do his job so he bought the books from the author and start reading them. Besides giving nightmares he saw that some of his covers had some strange lines and combining all covers it made a map and this leads him to Hobb's End (the fictional town that appear in Cane books) in New England (where King and Lovecraft stories are set).

As they went Linda experiences some strange phenomena and some strange visions. As they arrive the town looks like in the books but it's deserted. Still Trent thinks that it's all in the publicity stunt. Linda then admits that the dissaperance was indeed a stunt but not the town. John isn't conviced.

They are led into a church to confront Cane and Linda is driven insane and stays in the church with Cane. Supposedly In the Mouth of Madness was going to be the last novel (literally the last novel).

Still John is not convinced until he meets in a bar a man who tells him to leave and commits suicide. He tries to leave the town (because of angry mob) but it seems it goes in a circle and is unable to leave. He then pass out and as he awakes he meets Cane who explains that because of everyone belief on his stories had resulted on the appearance an ancient race (deep ones?) that will eventually reclaim the earth. Cane then reveals that John Trent is just a character from his last book and he must follow the plot and return the manuscript to the publish house.

Afterwards he came a portal to the ancient beings. Linda and John flee but Linda stay because she had already read the novel and so was corrupted. During his return he destroys the books thinking that way he would avert the apocalpyse.

He then talks with editor who claims that he never knew a linda and that he had gone alone to retrieve the novel, thing that he had already had done several months before. The book had been on sale for weeks with riots in every major city and a movie is coming out... He is later arrested after murdering one reader of the novel 

Then we are return to the present time as Dr Wrenn judges that John Trent his halucinating. Trent wakes next morning to discover the asylum abandoned with blood everwhere. Then we hear the radio annoucing that the world is being attack by monsters and suicides and mass murderers are common. He enters a movie theater to watch the movie and sees himself as the main character. The movie ends with him laughing and crying saying that everything was real.

- What I didn't enjoy? Not much. I really enjoy the novel. I would enjoy seeing more of the beasts but if you read Lovecraft is understadable that they are only mention. Undoubtly this is a Lovecraftian movie. 

This is a movie inside a movie. So even if you think the characters, setting and special effects are not that good you can think - probably that's a critic of books made into movies. Haha.

Nevertheless, an overall excelent movie with good characters - at least the main character. The rest are just there following, helping or hindering the main character.

The main question remains.. IS this reality or not?

Interesting or not, people either love the movie or just plain hated. Strange. To me, 8 out 10. Will see it again (along the rest of trilogy of interconnected movies in about 10 years).