The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)

It's important to note that there is a reason that The Whisperer in the Darkness is made in the style of a late 1930s or early 1940s horror film.  This is because it follows a 25-minute silent version of The Call of Cthulhu in 2005, also made by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, produced to look like what a film version of the story may have looked like around the time it was published.  It was an underground hit and sold enough DVDs to encourage funding for a feature-length film.  For that they chose one of the more difficult Lovecraft stories to adapt for cinema, The Whisperer in Darkness.

Albert Wilmarth (Matt Foyer) is a folklore professor at Miskatonic University.  He has been receiving letters from a farmer in Vermont named Henry Akeley (Barry Lynch) informing him of crablike creatures surrounding and attacking his home.  After debating a sensationalist journalist named Charles Fort (Andrew Leman) about their existence, Wilmarth is confronted by Henry's son George (Joe Sofranko) with photographic and recorded proof of what is going on at his father's house.  George disappears when transporting a strange black stone to Wilmarth, who is soon invited by Akeley to visit the farm.

Wilmarth decides to do so despite the warnings of his colleague Nathaniel Ward (Matt Lagan).  After a journey by train, car and foot he is able to make it to Akeley's home to find the old man ailing but no longer afraid of the creatures, who are revealed to be the Mi-Go.  On the contrary, he is insistent on joining them, portraying them as kindly visitors that only want the best for humanity.  Wilmarth soon discovers otherwise and, with the help of Hannah (Autumn Wendel), the daughter of one of the cult members in league with the Mi-Go, works to find a way to stop them. 

The movie states that it was made in Mythoscope, which is similar to what was done with The Call of Cthulhu.  It's a method of combining old and new filmmaking techniques to create the atmosphere of an older movie, and what director Sean Branney was going for was an homage to the Universal horror films of the 1930s.  "The Whisperer in Darkness", the short story that provided most of the material for the film, was published in 1931, and Branney wisely chose the later 1930s as his model, giving the movie a full score and not the feeling of an early talkie. 

Since the original story mainly unfolds through the correspondence between Wilmarth and Akeley I don't fault Branney and cowriter Andrew Leman for adding to it and stretching it out.  A major problem with bringing Lovecraft to the screen is that, while he writes about strange things happening, most of those things either scar the narrator to the point of not describing it or are only half-glimpsed or more felt than seen.  Lovecraft, as far as I know, never contemplated any of his stories being translated to film, and never wrote them as such.  

What I do fault Branney for, though, is lack of editing.  The movie is dialog heavy, which isn't out of the ordinary for the movies he was paying tribute to, but those movies were usually 70 to 80 minutes long at the most.  As with older films the exciting climax was at the end, and Branney could have made it there in much less time, which would have given the movie greater impact.  

For a movie with such a small budget and an unknown cast it does pretty well.  Some of the acting is a bit amateurish, but the main cast is solid and there is some wonderful scenery chewing from Daniel Kaemon as P.F. Noyes, the leader of the Mi-Go cult.  Branney throws in a great twist ending and the Mi-Go themselves are realized much better than one would expect.  A major plus was the "advanced" technology of the creatures as interpreted from a 1930s point of view.

In many ways it is admirable when someone takes a Lovecraft story and decides to do something with it other than just slap his name on the film and use a couple of characters.  Here there is an effort to be respectful to the original story and that effort is more successful than one would think.  I was hoping they would continue, possibly with a 1950s-style version of At the Mountains of Madness or a Disney-style animated version of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, but these types of independent products take money and an audience, and not all get the success that Damien Leone has been experiencing as of late.  Still, one can hope that something will come up in the future. 

The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)

Time: 103 minutes

Starring: Matt Foyer, Barry Lynch, Autumn Wendel, Daniel Kaemon

Director: Sean Branney