The Last Lovecraft

One has to give credit for The Last Lovecraft’s ambition if nothing else. While most indie horror is happy to spin its wheels with whatever genre tropes are cheapest (this isn’t necessarily a knock) The Last Lovecraft goes for the cosmic grandeur of Lovecraftian evil something that even big budget Hollywood films have rarely, if ever, been able to achieve. The Last Lovecraft which looks like it was made for a buck o nine and a pack of Doritos goes for it anyway. That’s an A for effort right there.

Unfortunately that’s about the only thing that The Last Lovecraft gets an A for.  It’s not the production values, or run time, or the shall we say “massaging” of the Cthulu mythos that hold The Last Lovecraft back. It’s that The Last Lovecraft is one of those unfortunate movies that confuses it’s characters as affable scamps when they are actually appalling dicks. This is a film that is clearly trying to capitalize on the Shaun Of The Dead dynamic, forgetting the key point that Ed and Shaun were lovable guys who had to get their lives in order. Not hateful people you wished to see die in a fire.

It might sound like I’m harping, but it’s such a basic problem that it infects every other part of the film. Dear sweet Christ I hate this script. One might wonder how bad it can be as The Last Lovecraft barely runs seventy minutes. Well you know how a seventy minute car ride can seem like an eternity when your cousin is sitting behind you screeching at the top of his lungs kicking the back of your seat for the entirety of the trip? The Last Lovecraft is like that but with the added damnable knowledge that by putting this in the DVD player you are the one who made this happen. I would rather watch a buddy movie starring Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Kennedy and John Leguizomo reprising his role from The Pest then spend anymore time with the cast from The Last Lovecraft.

Anyway there’s really not much more that can be said about The Last Lovecraft. Anything (theoretically) nice one might have to say about other aspects of its production is overshadowed by the fact that if I actually recommended that people subject themselves to the lead characters on my own free will, with foreknowledge of who they are, I would be tried in the Hague.

Use that for the cover, “The Last Lovecraft recommending it is a war crime!”