Sadly Over-hyped

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Usually I don't like movies that have three stories with a wrapper around them but here it works fine. The first story is pretty good, the second is pretty dull and the last is awesome. The wraparound is one of the best in this type of movie. The first story was good with a great amount of creepy monster effects and scary moments. The second story left me cold. The third story was great with like demons and stuff. The wraparound would have been better as a separate story but it is very entertaining with a great ending (just like the first and third stories). Four stories in one film and three of them are great! This is a gritty classic.

Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Payne, Richard Lynch, David Warner, they all lend both weight and goofiness to the movies they play in. In this loosely Lovecraftian anthology, they don't disappoint. The stories have various degrees of quality in writing and acting, but the low budget high impact special effects and the overall atmosphere of the movie is quite satisfying.Written, directed and acted by different people, the three parts are basically different short films, wrapped around by a silly story of Lovecraft reading the Necronomicon in order to gain inspirations for his writing. Jeffrey Combs is playing Lovecraft. Just recently having seen another TV movie based on Lovecraft, it was fun to see him play another character in that one, as well, 16 years later.I recognized the second story as Cool Air, but it was kind of difficult to recognize The Rats in the Walls and The Whisperer in Darkness in the other two. While I deplore the low quality of the scripting, I applaud the attempt to adapt the material, rather than follow it exactly like it was written.Overall it will never be a great movie, but for a TV film inspired by Lovecraft, it is OK.

Good props, good music, good scenery, good lighting and competent actors with Jeffrey Combs at the helm of the wrap around make this movie worth watching. The main plot is kept delightfully simple - H.P. Lovecraft goes to a monastery library to catch a forbidden glimpse of the Necronomicon. He steals the key to a gated chamber where he finds a safe containing the Necronomicon; setting off a mysterious mechanism that apparently locks him inside. He then sits at the table; flip open his writing tablet and rather than copying pages, he proceeds to write three stories inspired by the fishy effervescence of alien magic contained therein.That's when things get weirder than they already are. Not for the character, but for the viewer. The average viewer is not nearly familiar enough with Lovecraft's writings to understand how he portrayed the traditional family unit, and therefore how to understand what the movie producers were trying to translate onto film. Family and procreation in Lovecraft stories were at best only relevant in terms of interbreeding with aliens (shadow over innsmouth); at worse a social mechanism that has the capacity to de-evolve humans into violent primates (lurking fear). Lovecraft made no bones about it - the family that stays together, gets strange together.Without a lens of literary context to see this movie through, it's no wonder that it ultimately translates into an anti-abortion message. You have one character that is a perpetually pregnant woman; and another character that is bargaining to continue her pregnancy to save her own life. Perhaps the producers of this movie should have considered how these elements would affect the female half of the audience rather than just hoping everyone would "get it."With that said, I have no reason to believe that there is an anti- abortion message in this movie; particularly since the first story burns a Bible early on. If that doesn't establish where this movie stands in terms of religious values, I'm not sure what will. Also, a horror movie is probably the worst place to try to send an anti-abortion message; and certainly not from aliens that drink human bone marrow like a milkshake.I wanted to give this a 10 out of 10, as they did a great job with what they had to work with. However, since literary context is necessary, I am taking it down a notch since I have to, once again, encourage people to read Lovecraft to understand what's going on. For me, the ideal Lovecraft movie would not only accurately express his literary vision; but in such a way that the mainstream audience can understand it too.

Theoretically speaking, this is one horror movie concept that couldn't possibly have gone wrong! "Necronomicon" is an anthology embracing three lesser known stories (at least, to me they were lesser known) by the legendary novelist H.P. Lovecraft, filmed by an interesting variation of directors, and moreover linked together through an inventive wraparound story that revolves on Lovecraft himself; as played by Jeffrey Combs (who else?). Heck, even the title vividly speaks to the imagination of us, true horror fanatics, as surely everyone will recognize the "Book of the Dead" either from previous Lovecraft adaptations/novels and, if not, certainly from Sam Raimi's splatter-classic "The Evil Dead". Basically, we've got every necessary ingredient to cook up a wondrously delicious horror smörgåsbord here, but somehow the end result nevertheless left a rather sour aftertaste in my mouth… Each and every separate Lovecraft short story is superb, and more than often embodies the true definition of sheer genuine & terror, but the teleplays are underdeveloped and never fully capture the dark and ominous atmosphere that Lovecraft had in mind when he wrote them. Considering the surreal themes and sinister setting, these should have been stories that spontaneously inflict nightmares and cause phobias amongst the viewers, but sadly it never comes to that. You feel emotionless the entire time. It's actually hard to explain … "Necronomicon" seemingly has it all, from solid subject matter over stylistic filming aspects onto nauseating gore effects, and yet something essential is missing. The wraparound, as stated above, introduces Lovecraft himself sneaking into a dark & secret library chamber, because he heard the place hides a copy of the allegedly mythical book The Necronomicon. With the suspiciously eerie librarians observing his every move, Lovecraft reads to us three stories of the macabre. The Necronomicon is simultaneously the leading thread running through the stories, as all the protagonists come into contact with the book one way or the other. The first segment has a Swedish heir returning to the ancient family hotel by the seaside. He learns that his ancestor lost his beloved wife and child in a shipwreck, but managed to bring them back to life through forces hidden inside the hotel. Since Edward also was responsible for the dead of his girlfriend in a car crash, he hopes to discover the secret and bring her back from the other side as well. Obviously not the best of ideas … "The Drowned" is my personal least favorite story of the three, but I do have to acknowledge it's a stylish contribution. Director Christophe Gans ("Brotherhood of the Wolf") takes the maximum out of the marvelous seaside location and the morbid old hotel. The flashback, with Richard Lynch as the archetypal sea captain ancestor, is masterfully handled as well. However, Bruce Payne's stone-cold performance as well as the hideously abrupt anti-climax plummet the quality level enormously. The second story, entitled "The Cold", is my choice for best segment. It's about a sleazy journalist who knocks at the door of a large mansion and brutally confronts the lady of the house with the mystery of why so many people vanished after having visited this place. She has no option but to tell him about her mother's acquaintance with the brilliant previous tenant – Dr. Madden – who developed a unique but sinister method for preserving his youth and virility. One slight disadvantage, though, it requires a lot of human spinal fluid and must remain safeguarded in a cold environment. Personally, I'm a sucker for horror stories revolving on the quest for immortality (like "The Rejuvenator" and all the movies about Countess Bathory); especially when they feature an outrageously over-the-top mad scientist character, like David Warner in this case! "The Cold" has a marvelous story-within-story structure that nearly isn't confusing as it sounds and benefices from the most properly "finished" screenplay of all three stories. This is also the only segment that finds the exact right balance between juicy gross-out effects and high level of tension. Not bad for a Japanese director that allegedly couldn't speak a word of English on the set! The third and final story has director Brian Yuzna's trademarks all over it. "Whispers" is an indescribably nasty and sickening illustration of what pure hell is most likely to look like. This segment is lacking substantially, but you'll nevertheless stare with your eyes and mouth wide open, as it is a non-stop spitfire of pitch-dark and ghastly images. Unfortunately they are not really disturbing or scary … just very, very unpleasant! Two police officers are chasing a car down to a grim neighborhood and literally end up in a subterranean labyrinth of terror. Words even file to describe the atrocities they encounter there, including petrifying elderly folks, flying carnivorous demons and extraterrestrial butchers. I like a good portion of gore and bloodshed, but this particular segment was quite unbearable. In general, "Necronomicon" is definitely a mixed bag. Those who claim that the 90's only brought forward derivative, inferior and non- atmospheric horror turkeys should check it out because it's certainly one of the better efforts of the decade. Still, like that other 90's Lovecraft adaptation "The Resurrected", this movie can't hold a candle to some of the earlier – albeit admittedly loosely interpreted – movies based on the writer's repertoire, like "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond". I'm sure many people will beg to differ, but I think even Lucio Fulci came closer to capturing the real mindset of Lovecraft when he looked for inspiration for "City of the Living Dead" and "House by the Cemetery".