Main cast: Rory Wilson (Christopher Rivers), Ieuan Coombs (William Duffy), Lindsay Bennett-Thompson (Paula Conno), and Jonathan Keeble (The Watcher)
Director: David A Roberts
Older Gods was filmed with a crew of seven people, and lead actor Rory Wilson spends most of his scenes alone—if Christopher Rivers were to speak, it’s usually to someone over the phone.
This movie is definitely a low budget one, but it’s also a masterful demonstration of how improvisation and some ingenuity can make a cheaply made movie look far more expensive than it actually is. More importantly, it’s a good example of a solid Lovecraft-ian horror movie.
Chris Rivers arrives at a remote Welsh village all the way from Denver. He’s left a pregnant wife behind to look into his friend Billy’s death—he didn’t tell her or anyone else where he is going, heh. Maybe the pregnant wife’s mood swings are too much for him?
Billy is said to have gone mad and did some really bad things before he died, and Chris doesn’t believe that his childhood friend would end up that way. In fact, Billy called him before that fellow died, saying that he’d “run out of time” and he’d sent Chris a package and an address for Chris to “bring it to”.
Hence, Chris is here in this place. While he’s here, he’d also investigate the circumstances leading up to Billy’s death…
This movie is more supernatural thriller than gory goop horror. In fact, it’s actually more about Chris’s guilt over ignoring Billy’s increasingly outlandish voice messages until the fellow croaked, which explains why he’d travel all the way to Wales without a clear plan in mind to look into his friend’s death.
Hence, while Chris may spend a long time meandering around, it’s a well-paced, atmospheric, bittersweet sequence of a man looking desperately for ways to assuage his guilt and self-loathing.
While I’m still not entirely convinced that Chris is an American, Rory Wilson puts on a solid performance that keeps me glued to his character’s story. It also helps that the cinematography, lighting, and location are all solid, lending much to the eerie and increasingly disquieting atmosphere of the character’s surroundings.
This movie falls apart considerably in its late third or so, though. Early on, there is a clumsy explanation of cosmic horror delivered through a video of Billy that is clearly meant for the viewer instead of Chris, but this late third really ramps up the hammy and heavy handed exposition. Things are explained to Chris, and hence the audience, and the whole movie ends with a cringe-inducing voice over of Chris further laying the exposition thick.
I know, you can argue that HP Lovecraft’s works are basically exposition overload, but this movie does an excellent job balancing the show and tell in its first two-thirds or so. The third act, therefore, feels like it should belong to a different movie altogether.
Perhaps the people behind this movie ran out of money and had to wrap things up in the cheapest way possible? Whatever the reason is, the movie ends on a tad anticlimactic note.
Oh, and the late third also makes the bad guys look super dumb, because they should have had prepared a contingency plan for Chris after losing Billy just a short while before.
Nonetheless, while it may end on a not-so-high note, this one is still one of the better cosmic horror films out there. The cherry on top is the blessed absence of cheap and lazy jump scares and other tired old Blumhouse movie clichés.
It’s definitely worth a look from fans of cosmic horror films!
