HALLOWEEN 2K20: John Carpenter Tribute - A Review of "In the Mouth of Madness"

"Huh... I thought for a second it'd just be the wall. Go figure.'

I know I'm super late. I've done some traveling lately and have had to work later hours for sleeping in. That's what I get for trying to work from home, am I right fellow lazy bums or am I right? Well, I'm trying to crank out the last three posts for Halloween 2K20 as fast yet efficiently as one can, so I'm here today to get the first of the final three out for your reading pleasure!

"Wipe your fucking feet or granny's gonna
mash an axe in your head!"

Today we're here to talk about John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. The film pays tribute to the work of renowned horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, with many references to his stories and various other works he's done. Its title is even a play on Lovecraft's novella, At the Mountains of Madness, and in Carpenter's film insanity plays as great a role in the film just as it does in Lovecraft's fiction. Most of the film is told through a flashback by the main character, which is another trope of H.P. Lovecraft. Clearly this movie owes more to H.P. Lovecraft than it does to John Carpenter. Without further ado, let's dive in and figure out what the literal madness is all about, and why I consider it yet another fine work by John Carpenter. This is In the Mouth of Madness, a movie that teaches us that if works by authors came to life, depending on which author it is... say Stephen King... everyone would shit their pants... but if J.K. Rowling's works came to life, everyone would still shit their pants but for entirely different reasons.

He was probably watching some jukebox musical. Those
things will make anyone go crazy.

In the midst of an unspecified disaster, Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) visits John Trent (Sam Neill), a completely nuts patient in a psychiatric hospital, and Trent recounts his story to the good doctor. Off the bat, two very great actors. I can see we're in for a treat here. Trent, a freelance insurance investigator, has lunch with a colleague (Bernie Casey), the owner of an insurance company, who asks Trent to work on his largest insured: investigating a claim by New York-based Arcane Publishing. During their conversation, Trent is attacked by a man wielding an axe who, after asking him if he reads Sutter Cane, is shot dead by a police officer before he can harm Trent. The man was Cane's agent, who went insane and killed his family after reading one of Cane's books.

Trent meets with Arcane Publishing director, Jackson Harglow (Legendary Actor and Legendary Gun Nut Charlton Heston), who tasks him with investigating the disappearance of popular horror novelist, Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), and recovering the manuscript for Cane's final novel. He assigns Cane's editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), to accompany him. Linda explains that Cane's stories have been known to cause disorientation, memory loss, and paranoia in "less stable readers". Trent is skeptical, convinced the disappearance is a publicity stunt. Trent notices red lines on the covers of Cane's books, which, when aligned properly, form the outline of New Hampshire and mark a location alluded to be Hobb's End, the fictional setting for many of Cane's works. Already the mystery and aura of the movie builds quite well, and the hunt for Sutter Cane is on! They set out to find the town. Linda experiences bizarre phenomena during the late night drive... including passing a rapidly aging bicyclist (in a rather eerie scene) over and over again, eventually running the poor guy over... Following that weirdness, they inexplicably arrive at Hobb's End in daylight thought it was the middle of the night seconds earlier. Trent and Linda search the small town, encountering people and landmarks described as fictional in Cane's novels. Trent believes it all to be staged, but Linda disagrees. She admits to Trent that Arcane Publishing's claim was a stunt to promote Cane's book, but the time distortion and exact replica of Hobb's End were not part of the plan.

This photo screams "girl on Facebook covered in tattoos
that says 'all I want is another tattoo'."

Linda enters a church to confront Cane, who exposes her to his final novel called "In the Mouth of Madness", which drives her insane; she begins embracing and kissing Cane passionately. A man approaches Trent in a bar and warns him to leave, then commits suicide. Outside the bar, a mob of monstrous-looking townspeople descend upon him. Trent drives away from Hobb's End, but is repeatedly teleported back to the center of town. After crashing his car, Trent awakens inside the church with Linda, where Cane explains that the public's belief in his stories freed an ancient race of monstrous beings which will reclaim the Earth... Uh, okay? But that's not all, as Cane reveals that Trent is merely one of his characters, who must follow Cane's plot and return the manuscript of In The Mouth of Madness to Arcane Publishing, furthering the end of humanity. After giving Trent the manuscript, Cane tears a giant photograph of his face open, creating a portal to the dimension of Cane's monstrous masters. Trent sees a long tunnel that Cane said would take him back to his world, and urges Linda to come with him. She tells him she can't, because she has already read the entire book. Trent races down the hall, with Cane's monsters close on his heels. He trips and falls, then suddenly finds himself lying on a country road, apparently back in reality. During his return to New York, Trent destroys the manuscript. Back at Arcane Publishing, Trent relates his experience to Harglow. Harglow claims ignorance of Linda, disbelieving she is real and claiming that Trent was sent alone to find Cane, and the manuscript was delivered months earlier. As it turns out, "In the Mouth of Madness" has been on sale for weeks, with a film adaptation in post production. Trent encounters a reader of the newly released novel, who is bleeding from his altered eyes, and murders him with an axe, being arrested for murder and sent to the asylum.

"Araaaaaabian niiiiiiiiights, like Araaaabian
daaaaaaaaays!"

After Trent finishes telling his story, Dr. Wrenn judges it a meaningless hallucination. Trent wakes the following day to find the asylum abandoned, seemingly after a violent and bloody battle has taken place. He departs as a radio announces that the world has been overrun with monstrous creatures, including mutating humans, and that outbreaks of suicide and mass murder are commonplace. Trent goes to see the "In the Mouth of Madness" film and discovers that he is the main character. As he watches his previous actions play out on screen, including a scene where he insisted to Linda "This is reality!" Trent begins laughing hysterically before breaking down crying; finally realizing he was a character in the book all along...

In the Mouth of Madness is arguably John Carpenter's best work of the 1990s. It's thematic terror and intriguing story points create an jaw-dropping scenario in which the main character of the film was really a fictional character in a book all along. The same sort of happens to The Truman Show and Jim Carrey, although not nearly as grotesque. Trent's expedition to Hobb's End proves that Cane's works are in fact bending reality, and we think that it's because Cane is a mysteriously powerful warlock author whose words can change reality to his desire; as it turns out Cane is instead the author of the book that Trent is the main character in, and In the Mouth of Madness is both the book, and the movie that details this wild ride.

Your dog when he learns that "Let's go to the park" means
"Let's go to the Vet and get you neutered."

I only recently for the first time watched In the Mouth of Madness so I could be ready to review it, and I gotta say, I was quite impressed. That John Carpenter touch was there all along, and I fell in love with its themes, its cinematography, and its score. The main title theme composed by Carpenter and Jim Lang is catchy as hell, and it's been on repeat on my YouTube playlist since I watched it. While the acting is a little cheesy at times, mainly from Julie Carmen and her awkardly clunky deliveries, as usual the dialogue is riveting; this time provided by screenwriter Michael De Luca. If you haven't seen it, as I hadn't, sit down and try out In the Mouth of Madness, a fun and chilling take on the psychosis experienced by the main character being planned out all along twist. Give it a watch!