In The Mouth of Madness is John Carpenter's third film to deal with the end of the world. Unfortunately, it's possibly his weakest, not only of the unofficial trilogy, but of his entire body of work.
Sam Neil is the insurance investigator charged with locating best selling horror author Sutter Cane on behalf of his publishers, who are eager to release Cane's latest novel. As the search progresses, the boundries of reality come crashing down.
On the plus side there's some great performances in the movie, especially from the always under-rated Sam Neil who comes across as smarmy, cocky but vulnerable simulaniously. Plus it's a great story, which questions whether what we call reality is what the majority of people believe it to be. If everybody thought reality was a Lovecraftian world of evil and monsters, would that existance become so?
Unfortunately, this is definatively the point in Carpenter's career where fundamentally poor decisions were made...either as a deliberate attempt to progress his craft or by pure ignorance of the choices he was making. It marks Carpenter's first soundtrack collaboration without Alan Howarth...resulting in a huge loss of atmosphere from the storytelling. The musical partnership with Jim Lang is a disaster (apart from the cool, rock out theme tune). The moody primal synth vibe is replaced by a cheap keyboard sound and inappropriate percussion.
Also, Carpenter's director of photography, Gary Kibbe, produces work so stunningly flat and lifeless it robs the movie of any visual style it might have hoped to have.
The high concept means the film's a lot talkier than other Carpenter movies, meaning it's far less cinematic than usual.
So what you're left with is a really cool story that told in a stunningly bland way.
It'a tie with this, Village of the Damned and Memoirs of an Invisible Man for Carpenter's worst.
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