Main cast: Renee Sweet (Rebecca Marsh), Tytus Bergstrom (Mike), Rachael Robbins (Keja), Saqib Mausoof (Dr D’Souza), and Denise Amrikhas (Amber Martin)
Director: David J Hohl
Perhaps one good thing about watching movies like In Search of Lovecraft is that it teaches people that it is the quality of the cast and not the budget that can make or break a movie.
This one has all the hallmarks of a low budget flick—crap lighting, cheap-looking props and venues, etc—but that would still be fine.
You see, this one is a mockumentary-style affair about a TV crew doing a Halloween-time feature on HP Lovecraft. Things very slowly come to a boil as these idiots realize that there may be more truth than fiction when it comes to those stories…
Now, cosmic horror is about apparently mundane things slowly being peeled away to reveal that things are far more terrifying than one can ever imagine. Hence, this movie being hampered by a low budget can still make itself work if it could build tension and atmosphere as things slowly spiral into madness.
Unfortunately, the actor playing the reporter Rebecca Marsh has only one and a half facial expression throughout. Most of the time, she has this brows-raised, wide-eyed “I’m a deer and I see headlights coming at me in full speed!” expression that never changes at all. Watching her becomes distracting as I find myself wondering why she looks like that. Did they forcefully coerce the poor actor into being in this movie? Or was the catering so bad that she was trying to hold it all in so that filming wouldn’t be interrupted? Oh, and sometimes she looks half-annoyed while also maintaining that expression.
It gets worse when this character is written as an unlikable twit. She pooh-poohs woo-woo stuff in front of the woo-woo expert she is interviewing, she talks about people to another person with the people just behind her, and when someone is obviously traumatized and praying for her life, she interrupts this poor woman to ask, “Do you know of Lovecraft?” When she complains about not being given “real” news assignments, I can see why.
The other main cast members are somewhat better, but that’s not saying much as the bar is set low enough as it is by Renee Sweet. The other two are Mike the camera guy and Rebecca’s assistant Amber, and they are one-note “guy” and “bimbo” archetypes basically.
Now, it is possible for things to be intriguing even when the main characters just talk all the time and do little else, but this movie is absolutely crippled by inadequate actors and a script that is determined to make the main characters as dumb and unlikable as can be. Because nothing much happens for the most part, it needs a cast with magnetic personalities and charisma to carry the whole thing.
That’s the problem with In Search of Lovecraft in a nutshell. What personality and what charisma? If anything, having the main characters run around in clown suits would have improved its entertainment value tremendously, as clown suits can always make mannequins look interesting, and the main cast are basically that here.
Oh, and don’t be fooled by the movie poster. I’m not sure where that naked sexy female ghoul is from, but it’s certainly not in this movie. Instead, one gets an old woman in terrible make-up rocking a chair for a few minutes, like it really wants to be something from the The Conjuring universe but only has five dollars for costuming.
Avoid with extra recoil, unless one is in dire need of a sleeping aid.
