Spooky Month Recommendation - In the Mouth of Madness - John Carpenter’s Lovecraftian Masterpiece

Hopefully, your October has been suitably spooky thus far. I’ve been revisiting some classics alongside newer recommendations and easing myself into the peak horror mindset. The films, books, games and experiences that I enjoy the most for the spooky vibes aren’t the flashy horror films full of jump scares and loud noises - keep a look out for my Conjuring film series review now that the last one has left cinemas. What I look for are terrifying ideas that are as interesting and electric as they are uncomfortable and surreal. Obviously, then, I’m a big fan of John Carpenter - The Thing and Halloween are undisputed masterpieces.

In the Mouth of Madness, though, is a little less notorious.

What’s going on?

In 1994, Sam Neill, one year after Jurassic Park exploded at the box office, stars here as John Trent, a sarcastic and jaded man who works for an insurance company to decide whether or not his bosses will pay out. He is both charming and infuriating and always seems to either see through people or assume that there is nothing to see. When Trent is sent by a publishing house to investigate a missing horror writer, alongside the author’s editor, he tells everyone who will listen that this is some kind of publicity stunt. They are paying him enough that he has no problem going along with it, but he isn’t going to believe any part of what is happening. But as soon as he leaves the comfort of home, his skepticism is put to the test as reality starts to splinter around him.

So they set off on a bizarre road trip to find the author, Sutter Cane. This is where the film veers into something that I really enjoy. Surreal images of the same child cycling alongside the car decades apart, while he ages rapidly. Their arrival in the small town where everything that happens appears to be lifted from the pages of Cane’s novels. And the repeating images, like a policeman beating a homeless person in an alleyway that slowly shifts from a one-off vision of brutality to a monument to violence as it seeps across the country. Carpenter never lets us in on the books themselves, or the eponymous novel, only ever giving us enough to ensure we are scared but wish we could know more. We’ve fallen victim in a very real way.

Do you read Sutter Cane?

The film, really, is about horror in its purest form. It wears its Lovecraft sensibilities on its sleeve, with Sutter Cane’s work acting as a conduit for the Old Gods who are waiting to make their way into our world. The novels Cane produces are infectious, unravelling the minds of those who read them until they become a part of the narrative of the books. While surreal, there is an existential threat here. The characters are human but find themselves either twisting into the role that has been predefined for them or realising that they have been acting out somebody else’s plot since the very beginning. Sam Neill ends up locked in an asylum as his sanity is warped by the author, who exerts a strange power over him - sending him wherever he chooses and removing his free will.

It reminds me of The King in Yellow. Not the entity from the Cthulhu mythos, but the Robert W. Chambers book that revolves around the titular play, which causes madness, violence and shifts in reality wherever it appears. Here, the true threat isn’t monsters, but the publishing of Cane’s book itself. Trent fights to stop it from getting into the hands of the publishers, to stop ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ from going public and tearing the world apart. But that is swept aside - the world has already been destroyed. The book did so well that a film has been made of the book. And we realise that we, the audience, are as much a part of this narrative as Sam Neill. We have been drawn in, and our reality could be the same being performed in front of us.

For anyone, like me, who is drawn to stories where the horror doesn’t drip from bloody monsters exploding from under the bed but from the slow erosion of sanity and free will, this is a must-watch Spooktober film. The perfect film to curl up with on a cold Autumn night so that your thoughts can be haunted and become the property of Sutter Cane, John Carpenter and the Old Ones who lie waiting.

That’s all this week, folks! I’ll be back soon with more recommendations - unless I’ve been written out of reality by Sutter Cane…

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