Somehow, because of the success of movies like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SEVEN, some directors have jumped into the bandwagon and have come up with bad imitations of what psychological horror should be. Then again, maybe we should also blame H. P. Lovecraft for this as well, because a man who had a knack for creating pessimistic tales where unspeakable evils were unleashed in the name of Some Freaky God would eventually garner followers. And why not? People gravitate to what they relate to best. Lovecraft himself imitated Poe on several of his own stories, and Stephen King has reworked many horror classics without batting an eye.
The thing is, not everyone can be as successful, and if you're going to create something our of a Lovecraftian universe (to mention a clichéd expression), it had better be truly horrific or it will be lost in translation. THE NAMELESS tells a story that visually starts out well but soon looses steam and ends up a complete mess. A girl is kidnapped and her body is found in a deep well, horribly burned beyond recognition. Only a physical deformity remains the identifying link -- one leg was four inches shorter. The mother grieves, her marriage soon disintegrates... and then, some time later, she receives a call. It's her daughter. She's alive.
An interesting premise, but from here on the story becomes less and less horrific and more and more a by-the-numbers investigation which somehow never seems to involve the police (because of course, we need to place the heroine and the morally wounded cop back in the land of Fear). The fact that these two characters wind up where they do, and that the story unveils its bland denouement after so much build-up (with talks of "synthesizing" evil into some fantastic entity and a cataclysmic event, which winds up being a lot of mumbo-jumbo) is what makes THE NAMELESS fail: everyone moves according to plot requirement. If you're going to do a story that is supposedly that twisted, it had better drip conscious malice and make people squeamish. ROSEMARY'S BABY did just that in 1968 and nary a drop of blood to be seen. Hell (no pun intended), even THE OMEN, a rather mediocre movie about another Satanic plot, fares better. None of the "nameless" look particularly that dangerous, either -- little more than druggies who get their kicks smelling glue and cutting themselves to ease the pain. Would it that any of them could strike the menace that Mrs Baylock or those dotty Castevets did. Maybe Ramsey Campbell will like it. Assuming he understands Spanish.
The thing is, not everyone can be as successful, and if you're going to create something our of a Lovecraftian universe (to mention a clichéd expression), it had better be truly horrific or it will be lost in translation. THE NAMELESS tells a story that visually starts out well but soon looses steam and ends up a complete mess. A girl is kidnapped and her body is found in a deep well, horribly burned beyond recognition. Only a physical deformity remains the identifying link -- one leg was four inches shorter. The mother grieves, her marriage soon disintegrates... and then, some time later, she receives a call. It's her daughter. She's alive.
An interesting premise, but from here on the story becomes less and less horrific and more and more a by-the-numbers investigation which somehow never seems to involve the police (because of course, we need to place the heroine and the morally wounded cop back in the land of Fear). The fact that these two characters wind up where they do, and that the story unveils its bland denouement after so much build-up (with talks of "synthesizing" evil into some fantastic entity and a cataclysmic event, which winds up being a lot of mumbo-jumbo) is what makes THE NAMELESS fail: everyone moves according to plot requirement. If you're going to do a story that is supposedly that twisted, it had better drip conscious malice and make people squeamish. ROSEMARY'S BABY did just that in 1968 and nary a drop of blood to be seen. Hell (no pun intended), even THE OMEN, a rather mediocre movie about another Satanic plot, fares better. None of the "nameless" look particularly that dangerous, either -- little more than druggies who get their kicks smelling glue and cutting themselves to ease the pain. Would it that any of them could strike the menace that Mrs Baylock or those dotty Castevets did. Maybe Ramsey Campbell will like it. Assuming he understands Spanish.